Tangail water tank: Mute witness to 1971 massacre

The land surrounding the water tank behind the Tangail Circuit House was turned into a killing field by the Pakistani occupation forces during the Liberation War in 1971. Mixed into the soil are the remains of freedom-seeking people of the country, their lives cut mercilessly short and their bodies dumped there more than half a century ago.

The water tank in Tangail Sadar is a mute witness to the atrocities, but otherwise, none can say how many were killed by the Pakistani forces and unceremoniously dumped there.

On April 3, 1971, while entering Tangail, Pakistani forces encountered stiff resistance from freedom fighters and endured heavy causalities at the Goran Satiachara in Mirzapur.

The Pakistan army, however, entered Tangail town the same day after overcoming the local freedom fighters and set up a military camp at Tangail Circuit House. The government residential buildings located next to the circuit house were converted into prison and torture centres.

Nityananda Pal was a lecturer of Mawlana Mohammad Ali College, Kagmari in Tangail. When the war started, he chose to stay in his motherland despite the opportunity to leave.

According to a book written by Nityananda's brother Porisosh Pal, Razakars knocked on the door of his brother's house at Kagmari in July 1971. Some of their faces were covered with black cloth. Although his family members, including his wife, begged for Nityananda's life, the collaborators of the Pakistani forces abducted Nityananda.

He hasn't been found since. After the country achieved victory in the nine-month war, Nityananda's family members came to know that he had been killed brutally in the killing field below the water tank.

Freedom Fighter Mohammad Salahuddin came to his home in Tangail town from the base of the local freedom fighters in Sakhipur on November 11, 1971 with some arms and ammunitions. His intention was to launch a guerrilla attack in the town.

On receiving the news, the Pakistani army, with help from their local collaborators, picked up Salahuddin from his Akurtakurpara residence in town at midnight the next day. He was first taken to the local Al Badr camp and later to the army prison close to the water tank. There, he was tortured for the next several days. Then he was taken to the killing field around the water tank area and executed.

During a programme last year, Sekandar Hayat Khan, a retired principal of Government MM Ali College and also president of the Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, told local journalists that Pakistani soldiers killed people and dumped their bodies in the low-lying areas next to a water tank at the northern end of the district headquarters. The corpses became food for crows, foxes and vultures.

He said aside from Nityananda and Salahuddin, Pakistani forces killed and dumped the bodies of Abdus Sattar, a history professor of Kumudini College; Biresh Majumder, a teacher of Bindubasini High School and his son Pritesh Majumder; Herambanath Roy, an assistant headmaster at Jannabi High School, and Pranodh Chandra, a medicine trader of Paradisepara; Shushil Kumar Saha of Shibpur, Bolihari Das, Promod Pal and Shanti Saha and many other unknown freedom fighters and freedom-seeking people.

"I was at war at that time. There was no opportunity to enter Tangail town. The Pakistani military with the help of their local collaborators captured freedom fighters and also local intellectuals and other freedom-seeking people from different areas in the district and outside and carried out the massacre in a secluded place near the district headquarters water tank behind the circuit house," said Bir Protik Fazlul Haque, a brave freedom fighter of Kaderia Bahini of 1971 led by legendary freedom fighter Abdul Kader Siddique.

"The place turned into a killing field. It is very difficult to say how many people they have killed there," he said.

Ataul Gani, deputy commissioner in Tangail, said the district administration has already preserved the spot and constructed a memorial plaque there. The distric administration is also constructing a Liberation War Museum with funding from Walton Group to preserve the history for future generations, he added.