All victims of a military clique
From Somen Mukherjee, HARDINGE BRIDGE, DEC. 14.- The clattering of Pakistani rifles across the Padma does not convey any sense anymore. The stone of their strength has rolled away.
“Now upon the first day of the week very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher bringing the spices which they had prepared and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher.”- this is an excerpt from St. Luke in the Bible written down carefully in a small notebook that I picked up from the Hardinge Bridge blown off by retreating Pak troops. The notebook is the diary of a young Pakistani soldier. Gilbart Roy, of Dinghada, Kusthia. Another excerpt from the Bible in the notebook : “Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul.”
Gilbert’s comrades-in-arms, and their President Yahya Khan, did however wage a war against the soul. It could not be known if Gilbert is dead or alive. But we found a stinking, almost decomposed body of a Pakistani soldier inside an Army truck on the western bank of the Padma, right under the foot of the bridge. The dead man, I thought, is no more a Pakistani but just a dead human being a victim of military elique to gag democracy.
We reached the Hardinge Bridge at about 1 p.m. and stayed for nearly two hours. The sounds of gunfire floated across the Padma from the south-east corner. The Pakistanis thus indicated that they were now in Paksey, an important railway station once a well known steamer point. There they have a small airfield as well, Paksey is towards Ishurdi about 10 miles from where the Indian forces are now right on the bridge itself.
The Pakistani troops have fled across the Padma. Badly mauled at Pabna along the Hardinge Bridge, their last escape route from Kusthia, they not only left behind arms, ammunition vehicles but also marks of their savagery and genocide on the western bank of the Padma. The mute witness of their brutality and barbarity the river quietly flows on.
Before their final retreat along this bridge the occupation soldiers killed nearly 300 innocent people mostly women and children and dumped the bodies in the railway staff quarters just below the western bridgehead. The quarters still stink. All the bodies have been removed and buried by the Indian troops. Only two children, a boy and a girl survived somehow. Too little to narrate anything they are now in hospital.
In their “desperate attempt to retreat along the Hardinge Bridge, popularly known as Sara Bridge the Pakistani troops blew up one of its spans, the fourth one from the eastern bank of the Padma to stop the advancing Indian columns. But this was done even before the Pakistanis in the rear could escape. Those who were bottled up in the western side of the bridge have possibly taken shelter in the neighboring villages in civvies. The Indian troops are now engaged in mopping up operations.”
When the Pakistanis began their retreat along the bridge a group of about 500 all in civvies were spotted by the Indian Air Force crossing the bridge. But the IAF did not strike as it is India’s decision not to kill any civilian. But the Pakistani soldiers had not spared even the Razakars after serving them for the last serving them for the last several months naturally wanted to go with them. But the Pak soldiers gunned them down, they being of no use to them any more. The surviving Razakars are now in search of the Pakistani soldiers in mufti. A section of the people locally known as “Bihari Bengali”, who were deadly against the Pak occupation troops were gunned down with their families and the bodies dumped in the railway quarters.
We saw, while standing on this 15-span bridge, the charred remains of two Pak army jeeps one ambulance van with its Red Cross mark plastered with mud, and a tank blasted by the Pakistanis themselves as they failed to pull it back to the eastern bank of the river neo of the jeeps was covered with some banana trees.
Maybe, an Indian army officer said the Pak troops knew it well before that they would have to retreat along this bridge, because strong steel sheets painted dull red were spread and bolted all along between the up and the down trucks. They tried to pull back the vehicles along these steel-sheet passages but failed to complete their job. They had to run helter-skelter leaving behind on the bridge even their shoes and socks and morphine ampoules. They left almost everything from personal letters and shaving razors to Shave tanks.
On the river bank and the surrounding areas, a large number of tracks and jeeps, arms and ammunition-mostly made in China and the USA-and lots of wireless equipment (US) and telephones (Chinese) and torn pieces of Pak army uniform and even borkha were scattered reminding one of the ravages of war and the brutality perpetrated by the Pak military junta. Love letters and war insurance policies and military handbooks were flying in the air. A bear, a big and ferocious one, was caught from inside the ambulance van left by the Pakistanis on the bridge. It was apparently their mascot. It was killed as the battle’s ferocity increased.
Before heading towards Hardinge Bridge. We visited the Kushtia Circuit House and the Jhenidah Cadet College. At the Cadet College we saw a huge dump of ammunition which the Pakistani forces could not use as they did not get any chance to fall back at this base headquarters from Jivannagar but ran straight to Kusthia where they were engaged in a bitter fight with the advancing Indian troops both from Karimpur and Meherpur.
Even though in this south western sector the Pakistanis had built up a heavily fortified complex for giving a stiff resistance they had been put on the run and had to fall back on the Hardinge Bridge when the Indian troops swung north from Jeevan Nagar along the Darshana-Kotchandpur axis and hit Jhenidah. The Pakistani troops did, however, give a stiff fight at Kushtia and retained their last position for more than 10 hours. They could not make use of the concrete bunkers and anti-tank weapons.
Before leaving Kushtia through Jessore we saw Indian troops clearing the areas of operation and getting ready to mop up the enemy’s possible hideouts. And at the same time old people were splitting bamboos to make new roofs for their huts. And amidst the vast span of golden mustard fields interrupted by long sugarcanes and paddy fields, boys were grazing cows, buffaloes were enjoying a mud bath, cranes were simply idling.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 15.12.1971