Staff Reporter :
Black Night of March 25 tonight. On this dreadful night in 1971, the barbarous Pakistani occupation forces had unleashed large scale genocide on the unarmed innocent sleeping Bangalees.
Through launching ‘Operation Searchlight’, the Pakistani junta had mercilessly killed the Bangalee members of EPR (East Pakistan Rifles) and police, students and teachers, as well as thousands of common people in Dhaka city on that black night.
At the beginning of Operation Searchlight, ten teachers of Dhaka University were killed.
Before that, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had declared the independence of Bangladesh and asked the people to create united resistance against the occupying forces. In a bid to stop the legitimate movement of the Bangalees, the Pak military forces arrested Bangabandhu on that night following his declaration of the country’s independence.
Bangabandhu was taken to the then West Pakistan where he had to spend long nine months in a dark condemned cell of a Pakistani jail.
Operation Searchlight is a dark night of Bangladesh. It was a planned military operation carried out by the Pakistan Army to curb the Bangalee nationalist movement in the then East Pakistan in March, 1971.
The Pakistani army convoy attacked Dhaka University on 25 March 1971, armed with heavy weapons such as tanks, automatic rifles, rocket launchers, heavy mortar, machine guns from all directions.
The night of massacre on March 25 in 1971, was a complete military operation by Pakistan occupation forces. This was one of very few military operations in post-World War-II history, which ultimately had been planned against civilians, just to kill a smart percentage of them and to scare the survivors.
The concept of ‘Operation Searchlight’ was inspired by the My Lai massacre that US Army carried out in Vietnam. The March 25 atrocities carried out by Pakistani military junta triggered the struggle for independence.
Different political parties and socio-cultural organisations have chalked out elaborate programmes in observance of the Black Night to pay deep homage to the martyrs.
It was a terrible night. The Pak junta started roaming the city streets. The tanks and cannons were shelling. The frightened city dwellers remained their doors closed and light switched off. The shelling and firing continued till fazr prayers, many survivors shockingly recollect the horror that still haunts them.
