Barisal
Written by Syed Maidul Islam, WB Union Institution, 10th grade, Science Section
Account of Shefali Begum, Village/Post: Atipara, Thana: Ujirpara, Barisal
I often ask my grandmother Shefali Begum about my grandfather Shaheed Kazi Mozammel Haque – his role in the Liberation War and how he became a martyr. She tells me about how after the war started, he braved the walk from Khulna to Ujirpur thana’s Aatipara village where she was living with her father. My mother had not yet been born. He settled down there, and secretly started militia training.
My grandfather would keep my grandmother in the dark about his activities, but she still knew a fair bit. His friends, freedom fighters Syed Mokbul and Ali Ashrab Jamaddar would head out on their missions with only two rifles. To my grandmother’s ardent requests to stay back, they would say: “We have to liberate the country. We’ll die if we have to.”
My grandparents relocated to my grandfather’s hometown in Changuria village during the war, where the people of the village beseeched my grandfather to train their men since he was a member of the army. This is when my grandfather started to train freedom fighters, but he hadn’t left home to join the war yet. One day the West Pakistani army landed in Gutia on a gunboat.
They massacred their way to Changuria village looking for the house of Kazi Mozammel Haque. Panicked villagers ran out of their houses only to fall right in front of the Pakistani army. The army did not recognise my grandfather, and asked him for directions to his own house. He spoke Urdu and led them further ahead.
The army started to indiscriminately kill villagers. After the army left my grandfather tried to treat some of the injured people with whatever medicine was available to him. One of his neighbours’ was lying with his guts in his hands. My grandfather tried to push the guts back but the man died within minutes. Many people died similar deaths that day.
My mother was only a month old at the time. My grandfather told his wife: “I should have died today. They came to kill me, because I’ve trained freedom fighters. Allah has saved me. I will go to war tomorrow.” My grandmother begged him to not leave behind his month-old daughter and a-year-and-a-half-old son, to no avail.
He asked his mother, who was still alive at the time, to look after his family, and to try and explain to his wife why he must go. He joined the war and became in charge of Chowdhurybari camp, in Banaripara’s Alta village.
A few days later the Pakistani army attacked Shorupakathi’s Banaripara on a gunboat. A long battle ensued that martyred many men. One day, during the month of Bhaidra, when there was water everywhere a few people carried a corpse back to the house; it was my grandfather.
My grandmother returned to her father’s village in Aatipara and prepared for life as a widow after the war. She raised her two children, and gave them a good education. She has, to this day, kept the bloody shirt my grandfather was wearing when he died. She says: “I am proud to be a martyr’s wife.” I am also proud to be a martyr’s grandson.
Rajbari
Written by Md Afazuddin, Baharpur High School, 10th grade
Account of Md Farid Mondol, Rajbari
The sad occurrences of 1971 keep us awake even today. One night, my grandfather tells me, my grandmother had left her children home to go to her neighbour’s house to borrow some rice. Our village was surrounded on two sides by the railway, from where the Pakistani army attacked randomly at the village with machine guns.
Seeing this, my grandmother ran back home and picked up her baby, at which point she got shot in the knee. She was in shock, not realising what had just happened, transfixed in one place. My grandfather came running and asked her to take the baby and run back to the pond behind the house.
She tried to make a run for it, but she could not raise her foot. It was as if her foot was stuck to the ground. She began wailing, and soon lost her consciousness. The barrage of bullets was constant, while some people were pouring cold water on my grandmother’s head and others were massaging her scalp with oil. She had become completely helpless trying to protect her child. She was unconscious for three days straight.
Her son was screaming for milk, and her feet were smeared in blood. She came to consciousness one day, but didn’t move for two to three more days. She had become completely emaciated. A doctor looked her over, but she was completely paralysed.
She is still alive today, but she cannot walk.
Bagerhat
Written by Sheikh Al Mamun, Goalmath Roshikolal Middle School, 7th grade, Kachua, Bagerhat
Account of Zulekha Begum, Rajipara,
PO: Sholarkola, Thana: Kachua, Bagerhat
My husband’s name is Sofi Medda and our son’s name is Shaha Medda. They were part of Muktibahini. The Pakistani army was searching for my husband to kill him.
Our house was in Kakarbil. On the fateful day, he had come to Goalmath Bazar to buy some groceries. The Pakistani army was alerted about this and they came to the bazaar to kill him. But he was already gone by the time they got there.
However, he had forgotten to buy something for his son, and went back, this time he took his son along with him. If he had not come to the bazaar maybe he wouldn’t have been shot. The second he got there, the Pakistani army rounded him up along with his son in the middle of the bazaar and started pounding them.
After beating them up, the army men blindfolded Sofi Medda and his son Shaha Medda, and carried them off in a van from the Goalmath Bazar. At Fatehpur Bridge, they kicked Sofi Medda and his son off the van.
Sofi entreated the army to kill him but spare his son, to no luck. The Pakistani army men told them to bathe in the Fatehpur stream for one last time. When father and son took a dive and reappeared on the surface, the army shot at his son first, killing him instantly, and then him.
The bystanders ran for their lives.
Kurigram
Written by Lucky Parvin Khushi, Newashi Jagoroni Girl’s College, 10th grade, Social Sciences Section
Account of Hafez Molla, Newashi, Nageshwari, Kurigram
I am an inhabitant of Kurigram district’s Newashi village in Najeshwari thana. My father’s name is Md Hafez Molla. My name is Lucky Parvin Khushi. My father was a freedom fighter. He is extremely hardworking and brave. He took part in the Liberation War of 1971 and is still alive. I have heard of many stories about 1971 from my father.
He did his guerilla training in India’s Nengtishing Bazar’s harsh militia training center for one month before moving on to advanced training at Shilguri Panigota militia training center where he earned FF number 4411.
After this he trained a further one month. Him along with 500 other freedom fighters under the name of Alpha Company seized control of the village Shahebpur, in the India-Bangladesh border near Najeshwari. From here onwards, they prepared for flat out war.
My father tells me that during the day he used to dress as a civilian and gather intelligence on the enemy, which they used to formulate operations that they carried out at night. This way they continued to capture enemy camp after enemy camp. This also restocked their supply of gunpowder and weapons.
During the war, my father had gotten shot in his left hand. He fought in the war and he is alive to this day. I consider this a blessing.
Faridpur
Written by Nupur Biswas, Alfadanga A Z Girl’s High School, 9th grade, Commerce Section
Account of Nihar Bala, Alfadanga, Faridpur
During the 1971 Liberation War I was just a wife in this village and my husband was a fisherman. I had two sons and two daughters. One day, at dawn, the Pakistani military attacked our village.
Some people were still sleeping at the time, while others had headed out to the field for work. The military set all the houses on fire. Everybody ran any which way they could. Our neighbours fled to India. They had told us to follow suit with the entire family. But my husband was not around, and I could not leave.
My husband and his younger brother had taken to the streets with me and my four children to find a safe passage for us.
My husband’s brother believed that nobody would attack us. He took us to his house. Just as he was saying this the military shot him and my husband, killing them instantly. I asked them to shoot me as well, because I couldn’t leave my husband behind, but my mother in law dragged me back, saying: “Who’s going to look after the kids if you die too? What will I do? Where will I go? What will I feed the children?”
They had already burnt our house down. I set out with my children on foot towards India. But halfway, I turned back. I found my way back to my father’s house, but nobody was alive. On the way, my mother in law died of starvation.
In the house next to my father’s, lived one of my sisters in law. One of her daughters had died from starvation as well. She had somehow managed to keep her son alive. She did not manage to salvage any clothes, and went out to get water with a rag wrapped around her.
In a house close to the one we were living in, the Muktibahini had come to eat. When they sat down to eat, a plane flew past the house. Everybody was under so much panic those days that they rushed out, thinking the plane had been alerted about their whereabouts. After the plane flew away, they came back to eat.
Naogaon
Written by Md Royal Ali, Kaligram Rathindranath Institute, 6th grade
Account of Md Abdul Jabbar, Manyari, Patisar, Thana: Atrai, Naoga
My grandfather told me about how one day in 1971 the Razakars and the al- Badr brought the Pakistani army to our village Patisar. On the way to Patisar, they targeted three men from the previous village and shot them dead on the field.
Once they got to Patisar, they indiscriminately began to loot and plunder the village. They raped two women in the village. Some villagers managed to stay out of sight, and used the waterways to sneak to Manyari village to seek shelter.
While making their way through Manyari, they randomly picked out two men, Mohabbat and Tomij, and shot them dead. They also grabbed Kocchimoddi from a pond and took him prisoner, whom no one saw again.
Nilphamari
Written by Md Sadique Sarwar, Domar Bohumukhi High School, 10th grade
Account of Md Nur Islam
I have heard about this event from my father Md Nur Islam. It transpired on a Wednesday, on the field in front of the village’s primary school. In the afternoon, a makeshift village bazaar came together on the field.
A leader of the Muktibahini, Rahman, was speaking to the gathered crowd from inside the school, urging elders to let their sons join the war, and urging the youth to take up arms for the country’s liberation. My father was also on the field.
At this time, five people came to the field to sell hay. They were clad in lungi, shirt and gamcha – in other words they looked like ordinary people. They were accompanied by one of our own. Once they had spread out in the field, they pulled out rifles that they had been hiding under the hay and began firing in the air. When people tried to run away, one of them shouted: “Sit down exactly where you are if you do not want to be shot.”
Fearing for their lives, the people apprehensively sat down. The men entered the school building, and picked up Muktibahini leader Rahman, with the help of a local. After this no one ever heard anything about Rahman again.
The men, were of the Pakistani army. But the local collaborator was one of our own. Only with his assistance was the army able to capture this leader of the Muktibahini. There are a number of similar stories about the collaborators during the Liberation War.
Joypurhat
Written by Md Asaduzzaman, Alampur Demukhi High School, 8th grade, Joypurhat
Account of Md Shadul Hossain, Khetlal, Joypurhat
I still vividly remember 1971. At the time I was 40-years-old. I was harvesting wheat in the field. Out of nowhere, the Pakistani army came and captured me along with three other people from the village, and dragged us away.
Their car had gotten stuck and they made us push it out. Then they made us push it for nearly 2 kilometers. By the sides of the road there were hundreds of Pakistani army men. We also noticed a few stacks of corpses here and there.
When our strengths were completely giving away, they raided the houses of some other villagers, and made them push the car instead. The yelled for us to get lost and we ran for our lives, back home. I had never seen anything like it and I remember it to this day.