Witness to A Massacre in East Pakistan
An Account of Three Days of Carnage at Dacca University: A student who survived the three days of carnage at Dacca University last month has given an eyewitness account of how the West Pakistani Army systematically shot down students and lecturers who were trapped in the encircled dormitories.
“I jumped out of the dormitory window and hid in the top of the tree for the night”, he told a science lecturer at Notre Dame College, Dacca, who has now sought asylum in Calcutta.
“The firing continued. In the morning there was a lull and I saw some Pakistani soldiers giving orders to the terrified bearers. After a while I saw the bearer dragging the bodies of students and lecturers towards the football ground.
“They were ordered to dig a huge grave. The Pakistani soldiers told the eight or nine bearers to sit down. After a while they were ordered to stand and line up near the grave. The guns fired again and they fell next to the bodies of my friends.”
Yet, contrary to previous reports, the dormitories of the Jagannath Hall and the Iqbal Hall, the centers of student political activity and the Army’s main target of attack, were almost deserted. The Army had sent in almost 1000 men with machine guns, artillery and mortars to attack the estimated 600 students in the two halls. But most of the students had returned home and not more than 40-terrified students and the academic staff were trapped in the two halls by the military on the night of March 25 when the Army moved into Dacca University. Countless numbers of students from adjoining colleges are also reported to be dead.
The science lecturer starts his story on the night of March 25 when it became evident that the talks between President Yahya Khan and political leaders in East Pakistan had broken down.
“At about 11.30 p.m. the sounds of heavy firing woke us. We heard Army trucks racing towards the university about a mile away. At first I heard heavy firing of light arms and artillery coming from the university but later it seemed to spread all over the city. We lay down on the floor and at about three O’clock we heard a mobile loudspeaker van passing through the streets announcing that curfew had been imposed. The firing continued throughout the night but the intensity dropped during the morning.
“In the morning the Army announced over Radio Pakistan that martial law had been reimposed. The firing continued throughout the day and we stayed in the house. In the afternoon we heard sporadic firing and saw a huge column of smoke rising above the university.
“Shortly after eight o’clock on Friday night the firing intensified all over the city. We did not know what was happening but a little later we heard All India Radio announce that civil war had broken out.
“Jet planes whizzed over the city and we heard the clatter of machine guns and cannons from all parts of the city. Firing continued throughout the night and the next morning (Saturday) Radio Pakistan came on the air briefly to announce that the curfew had been lifted for seven hours.
“We left the house and ran towards Mirpur Road. In the distance I saw some soldiers on top of the Kalabagan Girls’ High School. We set off towards Sheikh Mujib’s house. On the way we were told that Bacchu, a good student footballer, who was one of Mujibur Rahman’s bodyguards, was dead. We went to see his body at his house. When we approached Mujib’s house we saw that it was surrounded by Army troops and we turned back.
“We turned towards the university full of foreboding. As we passed the science laboratory on the way to New Market I saw the body of a man who was presumably the Imam lying on the doors of a nearby Mosque. As we approached New Market, trucks of soldiers with machine guns trained on the people passed down the road.
“At the market itself we saw burnt out shops and huts of the shopkeepers. There were many charred bodies lying in the ruins. We also saw some bodies of pavement dwellers who had apparently been shot in their sleep.
“We turned off towards Iqbal Hall on the university grounds and saw many dead bodies in the nearby colony of rickshaw pullers and newspaper vendors. I rushed straight towards Jagannath Hall (the headquarters of the East Pakistan Students’ Union) which had been the main target of the attack. A passing student told me that Dr. Gobinda Chandra Deb, head of the department of philosophy had been killed.
“I saw many bodies of the colony of poor washermen attached to the university. Women were weeping over the bodies of children. I saw tank tracks leading up to the hostel. As we passed the football ground I was shown a communal grave covered with fresh earth. We ran on to Jagannath Hall. I saw the body of the gatekeeper, Dukki Ram, lying at the entrance. Portions of the northern hall had been blown away. It was a bloodbath inside. They had dragged bodies of students outside and ‘trails of blood lead us to the dormitories. A blood spattered mosquito net in the one dormitory was still burning, parts of the roof had been blown away: I met a friend who had survived the attack. He told me that he had jumped out of a window when the Army had fired on the hall with cannons and machine guns.
The student managed to climb up the tree and conceal himself in the foliage. He told the science lecturer that about 35 students were asleep in Jagannath Hall when the army attacked. From his hiding place in the tree top he saw bodies of his friends being dragged to a communal grave by university servants who were then lined up and shot.
The lecturer continued: “We saw that the canteen and the servants quarters had been burnt down. There were pools of blood everywhere. We went down to the compound surrounding the hall. There is a bachelor teacher’s residential quarters there. We found Mr. Anadwaipayan Bhattacharya, a lecturer in applied physics, lying dead. The door to the home of Dr. Chandra Deb was locked and a pool of dry blood covered the doorstep.
“We heard that.Dr. Abdur Rezzak, reader in political science, and Dr. Jyotirmoy Guha Thakurta, reader in English, had been killed. There was no sign of them but we found pools of blood outside their flat (the lecturer said that he had eventually found Dr. Thakurta in the Dacca Medical Hospital. Dr. Thakurta had been shot through the neck and was paralyzed. My informant says he died a few days later).
“We ran to Salimullah Hall and the Iqbal hall (headquarters of the students wing of the Awami League). The walls looked like a sieve. We were told that there were many casualties. Someone warned us that the curfew was to be reimposed and we made our way home. On the way we saw that the front of the Dacca Medical College had been shelled.
On Sunday, the lecturer and other friends began to search hospital wards for survivors. A wounded student who had been shot through the neck at Jagannath Hall said that the Army had encircled the building and had suddenly opened fire with machine-guns and mortars. “At first they attacked the ground floor and then the first floor. Nine of us hid on the roof, but they knew. We were there and troops came up the next morning. They lined the nine of us up on the edge of the roof and began shooting. I was shorter than the rest of my friends which probably saved my life. As I felt something hit my neck I dropped and pretended I was dead”, he told the lecturer.
The injured also said that Professor Sarafatulla of the mathematics department, Professor Khadem Hossain of the physics department, and Professor Manirujjaman, head of the department of statistics, had been killed. “Wherever we went we saw signs of destruction and death. As we left the university at Jinnah Hall we saw that huts of poor people had been razed to the ground. Nobody spoke and I saw students turning back towards the university with tears in-their eyes.
By Peter Hazelhurst
Reference: The Times, April 13, 1971