People of Bhandara village under Ranisonkoil upazila in Thakurgaon district have renamed a water body as Khuniadighee after the blood of over 3,000 martyred innocent people.
The word Khuniadighee means that water is mixed with blood of innocent people who were killed in a medieval style by the Pakistani regime with their local collaborators in 1971.
After the War of Liberation, the local people renamed the water body as Khuniadighee, situated one kilometre off Ranisonkoil police station.
The dighee (water-body) was dug about 200 years ago on six acres of land.
According to local people, the occupation forces tortured and killed freedom-seeker innocent people and freedom fighters in different torture camps and dumped over 3,000 bodies into the waterbody during the 9-month War of Liberation.
The water of it still reminds the atrocities committed against humanity and testifies the heinous crimes of the Pakistani occupation forces on this soil as a silent witness.
The occupation forces caught thousands of innocent Bangalees, irrespective of their caste, creed and religion, from different areas, brought them to the torture camps, tortured and killed them and dumped the bodies into the water-body.
The occupation forces with their local collaborators also caught hundreds of daughters of the soil, molested and killed them at different torture camps set up in the area and dumped the bleeding bodies into the water there.
While narrating the genocides committed by the occupation forces at ‘Khuniadighee’ in 1971, eyewitnesses Mohiuddin Ahmed Lalu of Ranisonkoil upazila town, Faizul Haque and Takbir Ali of Bhandara village could not control their emotion and tears.
Former Commander of Ranisonkoil upazila unit of Bangladesh Muktijoddha Sangsad Sirajul Islam said he and his fellow freedom fighters, lifted some 1,500 human skulls from the Khuniadighee water in 1972 after the War of Liberation.
An investigation team went from the capital city of Dhaka and took some skulls and other bones as samples at that time.
He said the Ranisonkoil army camp was a torture cell and the occupation forces caught and brought innocent people and freedom fighters there from different places of Thakurgaon, Panchagarh, Dinajpur, Nilphamari and other areas.
After bringing the captives there from different places, the occupation forces and their local collaborators inhumanly tortured and killed them and threw the bodies into the water body.
Recalling the barbaric atrocities committed against the humanity by the Pakistani occupation forces with their collaborators, he estimated that 3,000 innocent Bangalees were killed and their bodies were thrown into the ‘Khuniadighee’ water.
UNO Nahid Hasan said: “A monument will be build up on the spot to remember the martyrs.”
Prof Yasin Ali, member of parliament, Thakurgaon-3 constituency, said: “We have taken steps to build up a monument and budget will be allocated soon in this regard.”