It was a usual busy morning in Dhaka on February 25, 2009, when suddenly panic got the better of the people living in the south-western party of the city as sounds of gunshots started coming out of the Pilkhana headquarters of the erstwhile Bangladesh Rifles (BDR).
Even the journalists had very little clue as to what was up with the gunshots that eventually led to one of the most tragic mutinies in the nearly 200-years history of the border security force.
As the news started spreading over the mobile phones, curious people, mostly journalists, started thronging the BDR headquarters. But they could not go near the place for having a closer look. Members of the other law enforcement agencies created a cordon around the various entry points to the Pilkhana compound so that people could not go too close and get hurt in the random and reckless firing.
For hours after the mutiny broke out around 9am, people were completely in dark about was happening inside Pilkhana which was preparing to hold the Director General’s annual Darbar [grand conference] at the Darbar Hall inside the compound. That was where the bloody mutiny was ignited.
Rumours soon started spreading that brutal killings were taking place inside the headquarters. It was virtually impossible to get any information about what was going on inside. Even the army had little clue.
Army troops and military choppers tried to get access in vain into Pilkhana in the face of the bullet storm.
Rumours were spreading that many army officers, who were there on deputation, were brutally killed and others, including families, were held hostage at gunpoint. News also spread that some civilians sustained bullet wounds outside Pilkhana and many of them died.
Around midday, TV reporters managed to interview some of the mutineers at one of the entrances of the compound. The TV channels broadcasted the interviews – first information to come out of the warzone in hours. That was the first glimpse into what was actually going on inside and why the rebellion took place at all.
In the TV interviews, the jawans claimed that they had revolted because they had been treated badly in the force, deprived in many ways and they put forward their 51-point demands. There was no scope of checking the rebels’ claim, although they kept on avoiding questions about killing the army officers.
A number of ruling party lawmakers went to Pilkhana with white flags to talk to the mutineers but in vain. Soon after, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina offered general amnesty for the mutineers and urged them to surrender. Heeding her call, a delegation of the mutineers, headed by the force’s deputy assistant director, went to negotiate with the prime minister the next day.
In the meantime, at 10pm on February 25, a team of government negotiators led by the then home minister Sahara Khatun and comprising local MP Fazle Noor Taposh, held a meeting with some of the mutineers at the Amabala Inn restaurant right next to the Rifles Square shopping mall.
Hours after that meeting, the home minister and the rest of the government delegation, entered the BDR headquarters. When the government delegation was inside the headquarters in the early hours of February 26, gunshots could still be heard.
The mutineers kept threatening that they would not surrender until the army was withdrawn and if their demands were not met, they would blow up the entire BDR headquarters.
At one point the news came that some rebel jawans had started surrendering arms in front of the home minister, who was inside the compound. But later she came out of Pilkhana and the mutineers continued firing and kept control over the headquarters.
No step from the government proved to be effective to convince the rebel jawans that mutiny entered day two. Despite several meetings with the mutineers, no confirmed information came from any source about the fate of the officers who were held hostage by the rebels.
Only the bodies of two army officers – Col Mujibul Huq and Lt Col Enayetul Haq – were recovered from a sewage system leading out of the BDR headquarters on the night of February 26.
Finally, around 6pm that day, the bloody 33-hour mutiny by disgruntled border guards ended. Many mutineers surrendered at the BDR headquarters after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina warned of tough actions to take them off through a “suicidal route.” Many others fled Pilkhana, most of whom later had surrendered or had been arrested.
Earlier in the afternoon, army commandos rolled into the residential neighbourhood of Dhanmondi with tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs) to build up pressure on the mutineers to surrender.
The following day, massive searches conducted by armymen and law enforcers unearthed several mass graves inside Pilkhana where the rebels buried the bodies of army officers, who they had killed. A total 57 army officers and 17 civilians were killed.
Records showed that the mutineers not only killed the unarmed officers, they looted their houses and set fire to vehicles. Before killing, they abused and bayoneted them. Even the family members of the officers were gruesomely tortured.