It was 4 in the evening and the sun was still setting as Irshad Ali discovered his father Chikon Ali amidst a pile of hundreds of dead bodies at the Patkhola reservoir near present-day Chuknagar College. Suddenly his eyes fell on a small child – a girl – trying to feed on the breasts of her dead mother, who was lying lifeless after being shot. The child’s clothes were stained with blood.
Irshad Ali took the girl in his arms and brought her home. He named her ‘Sundari’ because he saw vermilion in his mother’s hair and also saw a conch (white bangle made of conch shell) in her hands. He was brought up by a local Hindu family.
Surendranath Bairagi, who survived the shootout, saw people cooking. Suddenly the sound of gunfire was heard in the small town. People were running hither and thither like a confused herd, scrambling for cover. Bairagi ran towards the river, where many dead bodies were lying scattered. When he came out safely after being shot, Bairagi found all his brothers dead. In a matter of hours on May 20, 1971, a desperate attempt to cross over to India by the Pakistan Army at Chuknagar in Bangladesh, Khulna bordering West Bengal, was met with merciless automatic firing of nearly 10,000 refugees.
There are some parallels to the post-colonial history of Pakistan’s genocidal campaign during the Liberation War of Bangladesh.
Since the start of the genocide that targeted Bengalis – Hindus and freedom-loving Muslims alike – the Pakistani military resorted to mass genocide to create a reign of terror that would intimidate Bengalis into submission. The Chuknagar massacre was one of many such incidents of mass killing as part of General Tikka Khan’s ‘Operation Searchlight’.
On March 25, 1971, thousands of panicked Bengalis marched towards the Indian border via Khulna from places like Barisal, Bagerhat and Faridpur. After a long long journey plagued by hunger and fear, they crossed the Bhadra river and gathered at Chuknagar and surrounding areas to seek respite for a few days.
Ghulam Hussain, the then president of the Atalia Union, informed a Pakistani military platoon in Satkhira about the flash flood.
Divided into three units, the troops marched towards Chuknagar at a frenzied pace. One for Malopara-Raipara, another for Chuknagar market and another for Bhadra river bank. What followed was the largest and most brutal pogrom ever. The indiscriminate firing from three sides engulfed the crowd of ignorant and helpless refugees. Men, women and children were gunned down and their attempts to hide in boats, behind trees or in fields went in vain.
From swampy areas to temples, playgrounds, school premises and rivers, lifeless bodies are strewn everywhere in Chuknagar. The Bhadra river turned red with the blood of thousands.
‘I want to know my identity’
After being taken in by a local Hindu family, Sundari grew up in a liberated Bangladesh. In 1984, she was married to Batul Sarkar of the same area. She lost her husband in 1990 and now lives with her sons.
Sundari lives in a tin-shed house, which was allotted to her under a government housing project, on the banks of the Kanthaltala river in Dumuria upazila. She is also working as an office assistant in Dumuria Upazila Shilpakala Academy.
Sundari said that earlier she had got 11 sataks (about 4,500 square feet) of special land (government land). But being a water source, she could not fill it with soil due to financial constraints.
She said, “Every May 20 I go to the Chuknagar slaughterhouse, around which there is a memorial that the government built to pay tribute to those killed in the firing. It is a mausoleum (like many others) that honors Bengalis. Keeps reminding of highness. The price he paid for freedom.
Sundari continued, “While visiting the slaughterhouse, I always get overwhelmed with emotions. I want to know my identity; I want to know the names of my parents.”
Fazlur Rehman Morol, caretaker of Chuknagar slaughterhouse, one of the eyewitnesses of the massacre, said, “After the massacre, many bodies were found floating on the river. So it was not possible to ascertain the actual number of martyrs.” Especially the relatives of the people who came from Barisal, Faridpur, Bagerhat Sadar, Rampal of Bagerhat, Morelganj, Kachhua, Sharankhola area could not be identified.
Chuknagar Massacre 1971 ABM Shafiqul Islam, President of the Memorial Protection Council, said that the massacre took place on that day in an area spread over four miles of Chuknagar.
“After the massacre, the local people immersed some of the dead bodies in the Gangrel and Bhadra rivers. They did not consume fish from those water bodies for two months. Some of the dead bodies were buried in the ground to avoid the stench. The bones were found during the establishment of Chuknagar College,” revealed Islam.
Sheikh Baharul Alam, a member of the board of trustees of Khulna’s ‘Liberation War Archive Museum’, told that 15 days before the war started, Razakar army was formed under the leadership of AKM Yusuf of Jamaat in this area. And this allied army of Pakistani army attacked around 10,000 local people.
Baharul said, “In the most brutal massacre of 1971 at Chuknagar, the exact number of martyrs is still unknown, but 10,000 to 12,000 innocent, unarmed Bengalis were killed.”
Local journalists revealed that in recorded human history, such a large number of people were killed in such a short time in Chuknagar in May 1971.
Shahryar Kabir, a noted genocide researcher, noted that in the 51 years since Bangladesh’s independence, approximately 3,500 mass graves have been identified.
“Such a large number of graves clearly speaks of human casualties at the hands of Pakistani Army. There is a need for serious efforts from all sides to conduct further investigations in search of such unknown graves,” said Professor Mamoon, who is also a teacher at Dhaka University.
During successive regimes led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and their iron brother Jamaat-e-Islami, a party of war criminals, attempts to uphold Liberation War values were thwarted and war criminals were glorified.
Since the assassination of the country’s founding father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country has been ruled for 30 years under military dictators and the BNP-Jamaat coalition. All those years ago, the attempted erasure was testament to the world’s worst genocidal campaign.
