The struggle for freedom in Bangladesh is marked by the bloodshed of innocent individuals, particularly among the Hindu population. The Pakistani army executed a violent campaign against those involved in the liberation movement and targeted the minority solely based on their faith. The roots of the 1971 Indo-Pak war were established on 25th March 1971, when the Pakistan Army initiated “Operation Searchlight” to suppress the autonomy movement led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League.
On the brink of losing its eastern half, which was distanced from the remainder of the country by over 1,600 kilometers (990 miles) of Indian land, a vengeful Pakistan unleashed a torrent of violence against the people in a last-ditch effort to preserve its waning grip on Bangladesh. The atrocities committed by Pakistan led to widespread killings and a critical humanitarian crisis, displacing over 10 million refugees into India, particularly in West Bengal, Assam and Tripura.
The full-scale war with India erupted swiftly and decisively after nine months of internal conflict and a military onslaught against Bangladeshi freedom fighters. Within 13 days, Indian forces secured a significant victory, compelling 93,000 Pakistani troops to surrender after a humiliating defeat. However, the nation endured numerous massacres, especially against the Hindu community, perpetrated by Pakistani forces, with their harrowing stories continuing to resonate in the chronicles of history.
A similar horror transpired on 2nd April when residents of Dhaka traveled to Keraniganj on the other side of the river. The Jinjira union and its surrounding areas were predominantly populated by Hindu families. After the violent crackdown and killings on 25th March, the East Pakistan army, which had seized control of Dhaka, designated Jinjira and its neighboring regions for military operations. The fatal event happened in the unions of Jinjira, Kalindi and Shubhadya in Keraniganj Upazila, across the Buriganga River from Dhaka.
Pakistan’s shocking betrayal
In January 1971, the Awami League emerged victorious as a single majority party, gaining 167 members in the 300-member National Assembly election that was held in December of previous year. Great hopes were held that power was finally within reach for the East Pakistanis. It was anticipated that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would soon establish a cabinet as prime minister, thereby addressing the long-standing economic disparities and the deprivation faced by the Bengalis.
President General Yahya Khan’s decision to cancel the National Assembly’s scheduled meeting on 3rd March in accordance with the wishes of Pakistan’s Peoples Party leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto crushed the dreams and ambitions of the Bangalis. Unsurprisingly, there was a tumult of protests and broad condemnation throughout East Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaimed a movement of nonviolent noncooperation against the martial law-imposing Pakistani government. There were angry rallies and protests every day in defiance.
However, the situation soon escalated. The Bengalis suffered significant losses in the sporadic clashes with the army. Admiral Ahsan, the governor general, and Lieutenant General Shahibzada Yakub Khan, the administrator of martial law, both resigned. Lieutenant General Tikka Khan and Lieutenant General Niazi, who were regarded as hawks, succeeded them. Tikka Khan was not sworn in as governor by Chief Justice BA Siddiqui. In a resounding address to the people on 7th March, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman stated that this time the fight was for independence and emancipation before a massive public gathering in Dhaka.
Conflicts arose in the port of Chittagong when the Pakistani army was prevented from disembarking weapons and ammunition aboard the ship “Swat.” Troops were reportedly moving to East Pakistan. The messages etched on the wall and the whispers in the wind foretold an approaching storm. The crucial moment was imminent. Soldiers from West Pakistan, disguised as civilians, started to land in East Pakistan.
Operation Searchlight
West Pakistan resorted to a cruel and violent armed campaign to stop the Bengalis from rebelling against the dictatorial authority of the country’s rulers. It was called “Operation Searchlight.” It aimed to capture or kill prominent Bengali intellectuals, student leaders and Awami League officials in East Pakistan’s major cities, including Dhaka. They sought to seize the armory, radio station and telephone exchange, disarm Bangali members of the military, paramilitary and police forces, as well as ruthlessly suppress the non-cooperation movement led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to take control of East Pakistan.
“Operation Searchlight” involved military actions in all of the province’s major towns from 11:30 pm on 25th March till mid-May. The planned launch time for Operation Searchlight was 1 pm on 26th March. However, on the evening of 25th March, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the Awami League, had a clarion call to the people to prepare themselves ready for a full-scale battle after his meeting with President Yahya Khan had produced no productive or promising outcome. Afterward, Bengalis formed a resistance in multiple locations that same evening.
According to Tikka Khan and Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi’s public relations officer, Major Siddique Salek, the Pakistani forces had to move the operation’s schedule one day ahead of time to reach different parts of Dhaka before the Bengalis could mount a serious defense. Subsequently, a widespread massacre and genocide targeting Bengali Hindus and freedom fighters ensued, aimed at instilling fear and forcing submission.
The Pakistani forces committed heinous acts against Bengali members of the East Pakistan Rifles and police, as well as students and educators from Dhaka University. They indiscriminately fired upon unarmed civilians, resulting in thousands of deaths, while also setting homes and properties ablaze and looting businesses. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was wrongfully detained in his house on fabricated treason charges, as Pakistan’s barbaric action resulted in the loss of countless lives, with corpses strewn across the streets of the occupied territory.
“Thanks to God that Pakistan could have been saved,” Bhutto lauded the brutality as Pakistani personnel, including Yahya Khan, praised the same. Notably, “inevitable” was how the Pakistani government described the military action in its White Paper.
The Pakistani army carries out a massacre
“Pakistani soldiers broke into our house through the backyard. Sensing their presence, three of my nephews gathered in one room. Another managed to flee. The soldiers entered our house, firing indiscriminately, killing the 3 helpless boys. They fell on the floor just like logs,” a survivor of the Sarder family slaughter in Jinjira, Ershad Sarder, recounted his experience, according to a report by The Daily Star.
He disclosed, “In another room, I was hiding under a bed silently praying. There were so many pots and pans in front of me underneath the bed that the soldiers did not notice me. I was extremely thirsty. While waiting under that bed, the soldiers shot dead another of my nephews.” That day, he alone buried at least 20 bodies. The majority of the homes in the Jinjira, Kalindi and Shubhadda neighborhoods of Keraniganj experienced the same ordeals as the Sarder family on 2nd April 1971, during the Jinjira massacre.
The precise number of people killed there was never known. Witnesses stated that the Pakistani army slaughtered at least 5,000 civilians that day. These villages were regarded as Awami League strongholds and were primarily populated by Hindus. Several prominent Awami League leaders escaped Dhaka via Jinjira in the early days of Bangladesh’s Liberation War. Notable student leaders also found shelter there.
The Pakistani army proceeded to conduct a raid after learning of intelligence information indicating that the Awami League was being covertly organized in Jinjira by its student leaders. Brigadier General Jahanzeb Arbab, one of the masterminds behind Operation Searchlight, came up with the plan, which Brigadier General Rashid executed.
An eyewitness and Dhaka district commander of Mukti Bahini, Mostafa Mohsin Montu, revealed, “By that time, the military surrounded the area with barbed wire and bamboo fences so that nobody could escape the carnage. Some soldiers started firing at the village. Frightened, people were running to and fro, but they were surrounded from all sides.”
Pakistani forces with heavy weapons positioned themselves at Mitford Hospital according to the plan. The mosque of Pori Bibi was equipped with mortars and machine guns. Gunboats brought troops across the river and into the villages of Jinjira, Kalindi and Shubhadda unions. Brigadier Rashid signaled the forces to begin the raid with a flare at approximately 5:00 am. Afterwards, Pakistani soldiers began one of the most horrifying murders in Bangladesh’s history, using gunpowder to set buildings and bazaars on fire and indiscriminately murdering residents.
“After the massacre of 25th March, we started patrolling outside the village so that we could know beforehand when they would come. On that morning, I went to the riverbank and saw five gunboats full of Pakistani soldiers had just arrived. Some of the soldiers got down from the boat and asked me where Narikelbaria was. They also asked about the location of student leader Mostofa Mohsin Montu’s house,” Julhas Mian, a South Mandail local, recalled.
He hurried home and took his family to a mosque that was already packed with thousands of people. The Pakistani forces destroyed one of the houses next to it by setting it on fire. According to a man, the military there killed seven people. “I felt the mosque was not safe either. So, I decided to go back home through the paddy fields and found numerous dead bodies there. Reaching home, I found several dead bodies on the banks of our pond. We took the wounded to the Mitford hospital and buried the dead bodies,” he unveiled.
An East Mandail resident named Saiful Islam described how the Pakistani army slaughtered Hindus. “The situation was beyond description. Some of the people died on the spot, and those left injured were screaming for water. The entire Hindu block of our village was razed to the ground by the Pakistan army. Some of our neighbours hid in the jungle as they learnt about the incoming raid. When the soldiers left the village, we asked them to come out, but nobody responded. Later, we found their lifeless bodies in the thicket.” According to him, that day saw the killing of at least 5,000 individuals.
Hellish brutality in Jinjira
Saiful Islam’s story, “Hellish brutality in Jinjira,” appeared in the daily “Dainik Bangla” on 3rd April 1972. The eighth volume of the official historical records of the Bangladeshi Liberation War (Bangladesher Shadhinota Juddho Dalilpatra) contains that report. As the night dawned, inhabitants of Keraniganj were still sleeping. Suddenly, loud bangs of guns and mortars pierced through the silence of the dawn. The Pakistani soldiers started the killing spree. The whole area was filled with cries and people’s pleas to live. Frightened, shocked people tried to flee. Frightened people couldn’t decide what to do as they were surrounded,” it read.
It also stated that hundreds of mothers and sisters had been raped and that the homes of the Jinjira, Kalindi and Shubhadda unions had been looted and set on fire. All houses in three houses were targeted. As Brigadier Bashir finally put an end to the killing spree, survivors were only left with terrifying stories to remember. There is ample evidence of mass murders that occurred on that fateful day.
The Pakistani army lined up and shot down almost four hundred civilians in a single location known as Monu Miar Dhal on 2nd April. A memorial was later built there in honor of everyone who was killed in Keraniganj during the Liberation War. Additionally, 60 individuals lost their lives on the edge of a pond next to main route in Mandail. Eleven women were murdered by the army in one Kalindi village home.
“After the massacre of 25th March, I came to Keraniganj along with the national leaders and the leaders of Bangladesh Chhatra League. Although the national leaders left for the border, the leaders of Chhatra League were with me. Pakistani soldiers were informed about our presence in that area. On 1st April, a doctor of Mitford Hospital secretly informed me that some Pakistani officers were keeping close surveillance on Keraniganj using telescopes,” expressed Mostofa Mohsin Montu.
He added, “They were also amassing mortar shells and ammunition on the roof of the hospital. I conveyed this information to all my contacts without any delay. However, we could not realise that they would launch the raid within such a short time.” Around 2:00 am, Pakistani soldiers used gunboats to take up positions in the canals. Montu found out that Pakistani troops had crossed the river and arrived in Jinjira about three in the morning.
The soldiers received the signal from Pari Bibi’s mosque at 4:00 am. To ensure that no one could flee the slaughter, the military had by then erected bamboo barricades and barbed wire around the region. A few troops opened fire on the village. People were fleeing back and forth in fear, but they were surrounded from all sides. For three hours, they continued to fire at the village. They killed numerous people while conducting house-to-house searches till 11:00 am.
Bloodshed in the Shubhadda union
Shubhadda union was the target of the brutality of the Pakistani military after the Jinjira union. Poet Nirmalendu Goon, who sought refuge in a mosque in the village of Shubhadda during the slaughter, stated, “When I reached the mosque courtyard, it was overcrowded. I saw several dead and wounded bodies in the mosque courtyard. Some of them were lying, and some of them were upside down. It was hard to tell if they were still alive or not. They were bleeding profusely,” in his book “Jinjira Genocide 1971.”
“Pakistani army started firing arbitrarily as soon as they entered the village through the canal. That forced us to flee from our homes. Many of us got killed. We found several dead bodies when we returned home several days after the massacre. Some of the dead bodies were floated away through the canal and some were buried by the villagers,” stated Sahadeb Chandra Mondol of Madhya Shubhadda village.
According to Mohammad Almas, a resident of Shubhadda union’s Par Gendaria hamlet, he identified at least thirty dead bodies in his neighborhood. The Pakistani military started a propaganda campaign following this massacre. They claimed on 2nd April 1971, that the Pakistani army had defeated the separatist outlaws who sought refuge in Keraniganj, across the Buriganga river. “Action against miscreants at Jinjira” was the headline of the daily “Morning News,” the Pakistani army’s mouthpiece, on 3rd April.
“I was shocked to read the headline of the Morning News. It said, ‘Action against miscreants at Jinjira.’ I was hearing from the day before that Pakistani soldiers bombed the villages of Jinjira, and many people were killed there. So, were the apprehensions true?” author Jahanara Imam wrote in her book “Ekattorer Dinguli.”
The haunting memories
Everyone was frantically leaving Dhaka following the Pakistani Army’s merciless raid on 25th March. Reports of violent murders, such as the killing of 22 passengers in a minibus by non-Bengalis in Mirpur, further alarmed the terrified populace. There were accounts of the army making nightly rounds to apprehend youths, alongside information suggesting an upcoming coordinated search operation in homes along Elephant Road involving both the army and their associates. The morale of the people diminished, resulting in a loss of their commitment to stay.
Abdul Hannan, a former Press Counsellor, Bangladesh United Nations (UN) Mission in New York, who had travelled to Jinjara with his wife, kids and other family members after the events in Dhaka, also narrated his ordeal during the massacre. “On 3rd April, at dawn, we were awakened by the loud bursts of four mortal shells in quick succession falling in our area. Panicked, we ran helter-skelter. No sooner had we run half a quarter of a mile (in the opposite direction) than we heard shooting from the south. I changed direction and started to run towards the east, but after I covered some distance, I found that people were running towards the west as bullets were coming from the east. In utter desperation, we took to running towards the west,” he wrote in the Star Weekend Magazine.
Hannan added, “On our way to the west, we found a mosque and went to take shelter there, but it was full to the brim. Behind the mosque, there was a large graveyard, and people were hiding in graves. I hesitated for a few seconds. In the grave, there might be snakes and poisonous insects. I was between the devil and the deep sea. But snakes and insects were no more dangerous than the Pakistan army.” The Pakistani military hunted young men, even going so far as to search in mosques.
He further highlighted that “more than three thousand innocent civilians were killed and many injured in the army mayhem. The wife and son of Hamidullah, the then-governor of the State Bank, perished in that military campaign. This wanton killing was ranked genocide, an extermination campaign inspired by racial hatred against Bengalis and could only be compared with that of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, Srebrenica in Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda.”
