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KILLING TEACHERS

He started it off

TUHIN SHUBHRA ADHIKARY and MAHBUBUR RAHMAN KHAN
So very committed to his mission, ATM Azharul Islam did not hesitate to take part in the killing of even those who taughthim.
On the night of April 30, 1971, it was a mission accomplished for him when he accompanied the Pakistan army to pick up five people. Four of them were his teachers at Rangpur Carmichael College and the fifth was a teacher's wife. The five were killed the same night.
But this was only one of the many crimes he committed soon after the 1971 war broke. His brutality towards the beginning of the war eventually earned him a top post in the infamous Al-Badr Bahini in Rangpur that was formed only weekslater. What Azhar had begun in April in Rangpur, his fellow Al-Badr men finished it off at the fag end of the war. This killing squad of the Pakistan forces picked up and massacred hundreds of intellectuals and professionals in efforts to cripple the soon-to-be-born Bangladesh.
For the families of the Rangpur victims, the agonising wait for justice seems to have ended, 43 years after they lost their loved ones.
The International Crimes Tribunal-1 yesterday handed down the death penalty to Azhar, an assistant secretary general of Jamaat, for the killings that the court termed as "an act of genocide". He was given the capital punishment in two other charges.
The verdict said Azhar along with the Pakistan army raided the house of Prof China Ranjan Roy and Prof Kalachand Roy and abducted them with two other teachers. They were then killed "with intent to destroy, in part, a religious group i.e. Hindu religious group."
It was around 10:00pm on April 30, 1971. After taking dinner, Carmichael College teacher Kalachand, his wife Manjushree, his colleague Sunil Baran Chakraborty and his cook Ratan Chandra Das were talking about the war situation sitting in his campus residence.
All of a sudden, several Pakistani army personnel and four to five Bangalees entered Kalachand's house, Ratan told the tribunal in his testimony on April 10 this year.
The army men blindfolded Sunil and Kalachand and forced them into a car. Manjushree pleaded with the army to spare her husband but they did not pay any heed to her. Rather, they picked her up as well, Ratan said.
"I recognised one of the Bangalee people. He was Azhar.
"I went to [Prof] Chitta [Ranjan Roy] sir's house. Shova [sister of Chitta] told me that his brother and [another professor] Ram Krishna [Adhikary] had been picked up by the Pakistan army," he testified.
Shova, now 62, was a student of class XII at Carmichael College in 1971 and Azhar was her classmate. She used to live in her brother's house on the college campus. Chitta was a professor of mathematics.
In her testimony on April 8 this year, she said around 11:00pm of the fateful night, some Pakistan army personnel stormed their house and blindfolded her brother and tied his hands behind his back.
One soldier even snatched away her earrings before taking his brother into a military car. When she looked through a window of their house, she saw some Bangalee civilians with the Pak army, said Shova, who came to testify from India where she now lives.
"Among the Bangalees, I saw Islami Chhatra Sangha leader Azharul. He used to study with us."
When her brother was taken away, she, with the help of Ratan, contacted her brother's student Salauddin, who had some good connections inside the cantonment, to know her brother's fate.
"About two hours later, Salauddin informed us that all the detainees were dead. Buried up to their waist, they were shot dead near Damdama Bridge," said an emotion-chocked Shova
Later, she went to her village home in Pirojpur and subsequently to India and joined a camp of female freedom fighters in Gobra. She took nursing training and served freedom fighters in their camps inside the Indian border, she told the tribunal.
After the verdict, she told The Daily Star over the phone from India: "We are happy that we got justice 40-42 years later."
She added, "We would not have left Bangladesh, had they not killed my brother."
When Chitta Ranjan was abducted, his son Chanchai Roy was two years old and daughter Suparna Roy was 10 months old.
Chanchai is now a teacher at a college in India while Suparna lives in the US with her husband.