A freedom fighter prosecution witness (PW) on Monday corroborated the evidence of another PW about the carnage on the riverbank of Ichhamati at Dhulauri in Sathia of Pabna during the Liberation War at the behest of Matiur Rahman Nizami, ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami. “The massacre had taken place in the early hours of November 28, 1971 in which four of my captured comrades-in-arms were killed and two others severely injured with bayonet and machete,” recalled Khalilur Rahman while giving testimony as PW-8 against the Jamaat chief before the International Crimes Tribunal-1.
India-trained freedom fighter Khalil told the tribunal that he along with his nine associates had taken refuge at the house of Dr Abdul Awal in Dhulauri village on the midnight of November 27, 1971. “All of a sudden at about 3:30 am, we perceived the sound of walking boots of the occupation army,” he said. “As I opened a window of the house, I saw Nizami and the members of occupation army marching towards the house,” Khalil added.
“As I came out of the house through the north side door, I heard several gunshots and movements of people shouting ‘hands up’. Then I realized that we have been besieged by the occupation army,” said the PW. “Seeing the predicament, I climbed up a banyan tree on the compound of the house and made an effort to watch what was going on.”
“At dawn, I had seen Razakars snatching ornaments from the women who were herded under the tree,” said Khalil, adding that he had also noticed two young women taken away by the army to a room of the house.
“Later, I heard screams coming from the room,” Khalil said and guessed that they (captive women) became the victims of rape.
At one point, the PW said, he had seen Razakars taking away the captured males towards a local primary school at the behest of Nizami. “At about 9:30 am, I descended from the tree and came to know that the perpetrators had gone away,” he said.
Khalil said that later, when he had gone near the riverbank of Ichhamati, he found 25/30 corpses lying there.
He told the three-member tribunal, headed by Justice ATM Fazle Kabir, that he knew Nizami, who hails from Manmathpur, one kilometer off his house in village Sonatala under the same Sathia police station of Pabna, before the Liberation War.
Nizami was then the president of Islami Chhatra Sangha (ICS), the student wing of Jamaat–e-Islami, during the Liberation War, he added.
Before ending his deposition, PW Khalil identified detained accused Nizami in the dock. The deposition over, the PW was cross-examined by defence counsel Mizanul Islam, which remained inconclusive.
-With The Independent input
