destroyed with mortar shells. The student was told by an officer of a ship that about four hundred bodies had been floating in river Karnaphuli.
A jute mill manager from Chittagong related that all his employees had been battered to death. An engineer from Peterborough who was in Chittagong said that the army men were rounding up people and shooting them down. There was no attempt at questioning. If the people ran away they were shot down from behind like dogs. The engineer said that the Bengalees were being killed in their thousands. “If the men with men with guns couldn’t find anyone on the streets they threw mortar bombs through the windows of houses. There were hundreds of dead children.” Corpses, piled high, were left to rot in the streets,
In Chittagong, Comilla and Dacca Pakistani troops even used the bodies of murdered Bangalees to erect road barricades.
The Pakistani armed forces have been laying waste villages and towns in a manner reminiscent of the Nazi atrocities. Even Tagore’s house at Silaidah-where the poct spent one of the most creative periods of his life-has been completely destroyed by the troops. In addition to looting food godowns and granaries they have been spraying inflammable chemicals on agricultural land to destroy standing crop and to make the land uncultivable in future.
Pakistani troops have been indulging in an angry of molestation of women. In addition to the girl students of Dacca University many young girls from different areas of the city were forcibly taken by the troops to the cantonment. Even the wives and daughters of Bangalee Army officers were abducted. An eye-witness related how in one village on Comilla-Chandpur Road all the women folk were stripped and asked to march in front of advancing trucks. All of them were either shot dead or crushed under the wheels of the trucks.
The troops have been playing devilish tricks on innocent, credulous people. On several occasions, people were asked to come and collect their monthly pay packets. As the people lined up in good faith, they were mowed down with bullets. In another place people were invited to come and collect their rations from the ration shop and they were assured that no harm would be done to them. When the people came to the shop, the troops opened fire killing one hundred persons.
The contents of the diary of a British businessman as published in a Calutta daily show that even foreigners have not been spared. Three Britons were arrested on March 29 by an army unit and taken to the cantonment in Dacca for having taken photos of the bombed-out St. Thomas Church in the old city of Dacca. One of them was an official employed by British Council in Dacca while the other two were members of the British Volunteer Service Organization. Some people who witnessed the arrest informed the American Consulate and an U.S. official was sent to the cantonment. He found the Britons literally lined up against the wall and the firing squad taking the aim. It was only this timely intervention that saved the lives of these three Britons.
