পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (সপ্তম খণ্ড).pdf/৩৫৩

319 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : সপ্তম খণ্ড The precise chain of cause and effect varies from place to place. Broadly, there is little doubt that, outside Dacca, Bengalis generally started the killing The rebels, on the other hand, overestimated their own strength-and in consequence made the fatal mistake of taking on the Army and the civilian minorities of East Pakistan at the same time The Sunday Times, London, 2 May 1971: Anthony Mascarenhas: The 176,000 armed and trained men of rebellious Bengali Army Units, Paramilitary forces and police supported by Armed Awami League members and students attempted to give terrible practicality to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League rallying cry: "Bangla Desh Khali Khurrow, Punjabi Marow. " (Clear Bangladesh, Kill the Punjabs). Eyewitnesses in more than 80 interviews tell horrifying stories of rape, torture, eye-gouging, public-flogging, of men and women, women's breasts being torn out and amputations before victims were shot or bayoneted to death. Punjabi Army personnel and civil servants and their families seem to have been singled out for special brutality. In Chittagoag, the Colonel commanding the military academy was killed while his wife, eight month pregnant, was raped and bayoneted in the abdomen. In another part of Chittagong, an East Pakistan Rifles Officer was flayed alive. His two sons were beheaded and his wife was bayoneted, in the abdomen and left to die with her son's head placed on her maked body. The bodies of many young girls have been found with Bangladesh flagsticks protruding from their wombs. The worst-affected towns were Chittagong and Khulna, where the West Pakistanis were concentrated. The official toll for Chittagong is 9,000 with a similar figure for Khulna. But massacres have been reported in other places. About 3,000 women and children were found slaughtered in Thakurgaon near Dinajpur; 2,000 in Ishurdi near Jessore: 500 at Bhairab Bazar, north-east of Dacca; and 253 in a jute mill shed in Kalurghattro area: At Brahmanbaria, across the border from the Indian state of Tripura, I found the bodies of 82 children who had been lined up and shot. About 300 other non-Bengali bodies were scattered around the jail where they had been housed after Bengali convicts had been freed. They had been shot dead by the rebels before the rebels fled in front of the West Pakistani advance. Pakistan Publications P. O. Box 183 Karachi