THE RAPE OF BANGLA DESH ANTHONY MASCARENHAS VIKAS PUBLICATIONS DELHI @ BOMBAY @ BANGALORE KANPUR @ LONDON. B42 Me VIKAS PUBLICATIONS 5 DARYAGANJ, ANSARI ROAD, DELHI-6 SAVOY CHAMBERS, 5 WALLACE STREET, BOMBAY-1 10 FIRST MAIN ROAD, GANDHI NAGAR, BANGALORE-9 80 CANNING ROAD, KANPUR 64 LADBROKE GROVE, LONDON W 11, ENGLAND SBN 7069 0148 7 © ANTHONY MASCARENHAS PRINTED IN INDIA BY AROON PURIE AT THOMSON PRESS (INDIA) LIMITED, FARIDABAD, HARYANA, AND PUBLISHED BY MRS SHARDA CHAWLA, VIKAS PUBLICATIONS 5 DARYAGANJ, ANSARI. ROAD, DELHI-6PREFACE On 14 April 1971, I flew to Dacca on the invitation of the Ministry of Information, with a few other Pakistani journalists and cameramen, Our assignment was to report “the return of normalcy” to the East Bengal province. The deserted streets of Dacca, its flattened areas bearing the signs of fire, shuttered shops, shell holes, bullet marks and the spirals of smoke still rising in the heavy, humid air, however, told their own baleful story. Dacca was a pathetic travesty of the city I had known so well and had come to love for its liveliness and friendliness. My many friends were nowhere to be found. Some had vanished, others I was told, had “gone away.” The only one I could trace with great difficulty told me in a cold voice: ““Why have you come?” As I tried to mutter an explanation, he cut in with the remark, “The Pakistan, you and I knew, has ceased to exist. Let’s keep it that way.”” Then he turned around and closed the door. In the next ten days during visits to the Headquarters of the 16th Pakistan Army Division at Comilla and elsewhere in East Bengal I was to get an unvarnished, chilling close-up of the campaign of genocide launched by the Pakistan army. Though my colleagues have subsequently denied it, I can truth- fully say that most of us were appalled by what we saw. I, for one, could not take it. What I saw in East Bengal was to me more outrageous than anything I had read about the in- human acts of Hitler and the Nazis. This was happening to my own people. I knew I had to tell the world about the agony of East Bengal or forever carry within myself the agonizing guilt of acquiescence. With this determination I flew out to London in the third “week of May to give the news to the Sunday Times. It was not without some trepidation. I had been too long a journalist not to know that a relative “outsider” such as I was even with