Non-Bengali Muslims In Danger From
Revenge Seekers
Peter Hazelhurst
Calcutra, April I. Reports from refugees and students fleeing from the hinterland of East Bengal indicate that indiscriminate killings by the Pakistani Army has not been confined to Dacca Politicians, students and ordinary citizens are said to have been shot down in towns throughout the province. Thousands of East Bengalis today began their flight from several cities to which the Army has withdrawn during the past few days. Refugees from Comilla, on the eastern frontier. claim that at about midnight last Friday. The Army began systematically to shoot Awami League members of the provincial Assembly and other prominent political leaders, including Mr. Dhirendra Nath Dutta, aged 84 a former minister in the late Mr. Suhrawardi’s Cabinet.
Mr. Dutt’s grandson, Mr. Kalyan Chaudhury, a journalist said “Neighbors said that my grandfather was dragged out into the street and shot in public. The news spread, and as people began to move out into the street, the Army opened fire. They estimate that about 100 people were shot down.” One finds the same story at Jessore near the western border. Two weeping students said that Mr. Mashiur Rahman, one of high ranking officials of the left-wing National Awami Party who declared that East Bengal was a sovereign state was pulled out of his bed and shot in front of his wife. The students added: “The Army then drove through the street with loudspeakers announcing a list of wanted students. They warned people that anyone who gave shelter to the students would be shot and their houses would be demolished.
Volunteers began to form up on the outskirts of the town the next morning and aircraft were used to strafe the mobs. “When we left, about 100 people had died, but we have no idea of the death toll now,” said one of the students. Stories told by other refugees arriving in India indicate that the Army hunted down most of the well known politicians in East Pakistan and it is now likely that the Bengal nationalist leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the veteran leftist. Maulana Bhasani are either in custody in the western wing or are dead.
As resistance begins to peter out in the most important garrison towns, there are signs that another tragedy in the eastern wing is about to be revealed- the outside world. Non-Bengali Muslims from Bihar province who fled to free Bengal when the subcontinent was partitioned on the basis of religion are now beginning to return to India. The millions of non-Bengali Muslim now trapped in the eastern wing have always felt the repercussions of East West tensions and it is now feared that the Bengalis have turned on this vast minority community to take their revenge. Several non-Bengali Muslin members of the East Bengal Rifles who were reported to have been attacked by their colleagues and Bengali villagers, surrendered to the Indian authorities on the frontier today…
Reference: The Times, 2 April, 1971 Media Vol. 27-21