Trip inside haunted headquarters

The dining room of late Col Mujibul Huq's residence was ransacked at the BDR headquarters in Pilkhana. His body was recovered from a sewage outlet in Hazaribagh Thursday. Inset, the house bares obvious signs of being torched.Photo: STAR

It was half an hour before Magrib prayer when the team of about ten newsmen was permitted to enter the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) headquarters compound. Moving through the gate, they passed a heavily deployment of law enforcers and army men.
Festoons and banners still hanging near the headquarters' main entrance seemed oddly festive for the occasion, as the newsmen moved inside to take photographs of the BDR officers killed in the mutiny.
Te air of festivity soon evaporated when about eight to ten badly gutted cars in the parking area came into view. The journalists snapped shots of the cars and moved on.
Coming next to the Martyr Shaheed Lans Nayek Munsi Abdur Rouf Birshresthha Sadak, with its well-decorated orchard still in bloom, they found manholes that had been opened to discover if any dead bodies were dumped inside.
Soon, on their right, they found the house of Col Mujubul Haque. It was totally ruined, its front wall bearing hundreds of bullets marks. It appeared as if it had been sprayed with a brush fire just before the officer was taken to be shot dead.
Flower tubs were broken, and all the furniture was destroyed. Even the children's toys lay broken in pieces, while the drawing and dining rooms were littered with fragments of household materials. The newsmen had only five minutes to take pictures before coming back to the sadak again.
Then, within half an hour, they reached the mass grave, which lay opposite the BDR hospital.
Measuring about 12 feet in length, eight feet in width and 3 to 4 feet in depth, it was filled with 38 dead bodies wrapped in cloth and placed in lines. Army soldiers unwrapped the cloth to show newsmen how the officers were killed: many were dumped in their underwear; some wore their uniforms or printed boots of the border guards.
The officers had been killed in a barrage of fire, with even their legs shot up. Their chests had been bayoneted, and their bodies were decomposing.
As the journalists took photographs, many felt their heads spinning and wanted to vomit.
It was nighttime when the newsmen finished their visit. An unusual darkness loomed over the BDR headquarter compound, descending upon the scene even though the army tried to light up the area with six huge searchlights.