পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৪৮৯

457 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড Frontier "When three women were dragged off to be used by soldiers stationed at a frontier town, we sent our women and children away. When the Pakistanis began shooting everyone they could find, we had to run too." In Saharsa, headmaster Siddique Rahman, 31, said the villagers had been forced to build bunkers. 'At 9 one morning they went the village of Goyra-Kagmari, which is very close to here, and they killed everybody. We counted 104 bodies. They killed the women and the children, including my mother and three of my nephews.' The headmaster put his hand on the head of a young lad whose eyes had filled with tears as we talked. "He lost five brothers," he said, The villagers were working mending thatched roofs and dismantling Pakistani bunkers for their wooden beams and sheets of galvanized iron. I hitched a lift on a shiny red Honda motorbike, sandwiched between two Mukti Bahini freedom fighters. When we stopped, Father Tedesco Sebastian, an Italian priest, who has been at Shimula mission for three years, confirmed that the Pakistanis kept up their terror campaign to the last. Riddled Two weeks ago a captain and three soldiers drove up in a jeep, made two villagers lie down on their backe in the road, and riddled them with machinegun bullets. Near the market town of Jhikargacha, the villages caught up with Razakar leader after the regular Pakistani troops withdrew. They started face, slapping and punching him. They hit him with lathis and they threw stones. They stopped when he was dead. Outside, the Awami League headquarters more than 300 villagers squatted happily in the sun for political speeches broadcast with deafening effect through four buge loudspeakers. This was the execution place, the doctor said. They brought up to 21 people here every day, tortured them, then bayoneted them or cut their throats. Then Dr. Abdur Rahim Khan and Kazim Abul Rasher, a tax inspector, led me to clearing in the jungle not 200 yards away. The execution place was dreadfully quiet, and the air was foul. Older villagers and lots of children who had followed us, were standing silently. Then the children moved ahead and called to me to come and see other burial pits. The most awful thing was that they knew where to look.