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March 1971 and a Butcher Named Shahed Ali

Lt. Col (Retd.) Quazi Sajjad Ali Zahir Birprotik, Swadhinata Padak Awardee
A lot of fictitious literature on the liberation war has been written but its true history has been far less. The history of many unknown and unfamiliar heroes’ participation in the fight for freedom has not been documented. We have lost the tales of many who from their responsibility to an oppressed nation responded to the call of their motherland and sacrificed their lives in an attempt to protect their heredity. The scope of research on their heroism and self-sacrifice is still limited. They sacrificed their lives to enlighten the future and for an independent Bangladesh. In the struggle for existence these people involved themselves in an unequal fight. Butcher Shahed Ali was one of those people who came forward at that time at the risk of their lives.
March 1971 was a month of movements and struggles, a month of many events taking place in different regions of the country. The people of Rangpur still remember and discuss many of the events that occurred in their part of the country. Butcher Shahed Ali was one of those neglected and oppressed people of this region who fought against the Pakistani army in 1971. The nation should pay tribute to his heroism and the tragic consequences faced by his family.
An all-party movement committee was formed in the Rangpur region immediately after Bangabandhu’s 7 March speech. This committee played a pioneering role with the help of the common masses.
Shahed Ali was the eldest son of Khizir Uddin of the Shommanipur village under Rangpur Police station. The village is situated five kilometers away to the south of Rangpur Cantonment. The son of a poor peasant, Shahed Ali completed his primary education from the local Borobari School and started his secondary education in Keramotia High School at Munshipara in Rangpur. But he could not continue his studies there because of the financial insolvency of his father. That is why, he entered his professional life after completing his 8th grade in school. He tried to find work at different places but being unsuccessful everywhere; he was compelled to take up the work of a butcher. He started the work of a butcher at a meat shop of Lalbag Hat (a market place).
Everyone of the village loved Shahed Ali. Whenever anyone in the village faced any problem or distress, Shahed Ali came forward to help him. Shahed Ali had a wonderful presence of mind and an ability to take immediate decisions. He had deep affections for his country.
The situation of the country in 1971 made Shahed Ali anxious. He used to tell his wives, “If these Punjabis stay in this country, they will invite trouble for the Bangalis. They will not let us live like human beings.” Hearing these things from Shahed Ali, his wives Ashrafunnesa and Komola Shundori felt afraid and panicked. As their village was quite close to the cantonment, they had some idea about the power of weapons and strength of the Pakistan army. They thought that the Pakistan army possessed immense power. They told Shahed Ali that if any action is taken against the Pakistan army, they would kill all the villagers. They always cautioned Shahed Ali to be careful.
Right from the beginning of March when the non-cooperation movement was going on throughout the country and the food supply to Rangpur Cantonment was stopped with the help of Cantonment contractors, the Pakistani soldiers snatched away cows, goats, ducks, chickens and vegetables from the people of the neighbouring villages. If the villagers protested against these misdeeds of the Pakistani soldiers, inhuman torture was inflicted on them.
Shahed Ali played a leading role in organizing the villagers. He went to the village market in the morning of 8 March and listened to Bangabandhu’s 7 March Race Course Maidan speech addressed to the nation. From that very day he asked the villagers to become alert against the oppression and forceful collection of foodstuffs by the Pakistani army and urged them to get ready to fight them. He also reminded them that Bangabandhu had directed the people of the country to get ready to face the enemy with whatever they had. He showed the big knife with which he slaughtered cows and said, “I’m ready with this knife and you should be ready too with whatever you have.” Complying with his call, the villagers decided that they would not supply the Pakistani army with any foodstuff and resist them from taking away foodstuffs from them if they tried to do so as they had done before.
Around 10 o’clock in the morning on 23 March 1971, a Punjabi officer of the Pakistani army Lieutenant Abbas along with a few armed soldiers came out of Rangpur Cantonment and started patrolling the nearby villages. Haji Jashim Uddin of the Shommanipur village became excited to see the soldiers and ran to the village shouting that a group of military personnel were approaching their village. Their aim was to take away foodstuffs from the village by force. Lieutenant Abbas was an officer of 29 Cavalry Regiment. He had also snatched foodstuffs before from the villages close to the Cantonment. Looting foodstuffs was nothing new to him. Lieutenant Abbas came out in a jeep through the west gate of the Cantonment and started for the villages of Shommanipur and Domodorpur . He was accompanied by one driver and four armed soldiers. The news of his approaching the village spread in the neighbouring villages of Shommanipur, Domodorpur, Borobari and Monohorpur.
Hearing the news from Haji Jashim Uddin, Shahed Ali took his knife and ran to the villagers to assemble them. He cried out to say, “Such atrocity will no longer be tolerated. We must not allow them to snatch away our property.” Sensing the dreadfulness of the situation, Ashrafunnesa tried to prevent Shahed Ali, but Shahed Ali pushed his wife aside and took the village road towards Rangpur Cantonment. On the way he shouted requests to the villagers to reach the village end with whatever they had. Within a very short time hundreds of people from Shommanipur and the neighboring village Domodorpur came out with machetes, spears, spades, axes, sticks and other weapons to face the Pakistani soldiers. Along with Shahed Ali, Rahim, Babul, Rafiq, Haidar, Jashim, Gulzar and some other young men of the village started running to the village end with whatever weapon they had.
They found that the jeep of the Pakistani army was moving slowly towards Domodorpur village because the condition of the earthen path was not good enough for a jeep to run on. Abdul Hakim’s house was situated at the very entry point of the Domodorpur village. The road to Rangpur Cantonment was on the western side of the house. Some high ground beside the road was covered with hedges and bushes. Shahed Ali, Abdur Rahim and about ten other young men hid themselves in those bushes with knives, spears, axes etc. in their hands so that the Pakistani soldiers could not spot them. They waited for the Pakistani soldiers from the hidden position. Shahed Ali told the young men that he would first attack the officer sitting in front and then they would attack the soldiers sitting behind. He said their attack should be so quick that the soldiers do not get any opportunity to shoot them with their rifles. As soon as the jeep with the soldiers neared the high ground, Shahed Ali quickly emerged from the bushes and swooped down on the jeep bonnet and stabbed Lieutenant Abbas with his knife. Almost simultaneously the other young men pounced on the soldiers sitting behind the Lieutenant. Shahed Ali and others snatched away the arms from the soldiers even before they could sense anything. With this sudden attack the soldiers were at their wits’ end. Then they all began to hit the Pakistani soldiers. Immediately, hundreds of people from the villages of Shommanipur and Domodorpur turned up there. After the attack of the villagers Lieutenant Abbas and other soldiers were almost dead. In the meantime, a Bengali soldier Nurul Islam of the neighboring village Monohor-pur, who had come to Bangladesh on leave, appeared there. Experienced Nurul Islam told Shahed Ali and the other villagers that if the Pakistani army could see their soldiers in such a condition near the villages of Domodorpur and Shommanipur, they would start a mass killing operation in that area and demolish the villages totally. He requested the villagers to leave the army jeep and the wounded soldiers at a distant deserted place. On the request of the villagers, Nurul Islam drove the jeep with the wounded soldiers inside it to a deserted place named Dangirpar which was six kilometers away from Domodorpur and left the wounded people and the jeep there. Perhaps Shahed Ali was the first guerrilla soldier and leader in the Liberation War and his fellow soldiers were the ideal guerrillas and were able to successfully ambush enemy soldiers even without any training.
As Lieutenant Abbas’s return was delayed, a rescue team of the Pakistani army searched high and low and after sunset they rescued him and his companions from Dangirpar in a miserable condition. Among them Lieut. Abbas’s condition was the worst. The rescue team brought them back to the cantonment in a dying condition. Considering the Goneshpur area as the place of occurrence, the Pakistani army with an aim of taking revenge burned down the village on the following day. Then they also burned down the ideal village on the west side of the cantonment. After these villages had been indiscriminately burned down, the protests of the neighboring areas grew stronger.
After the villager’s attack on the soldiers, the tension between the West Pakistani officers and ^the soldiers in Rangpur Cantonment gained momentum.
Several Pakistani officers were of the opinion of
attacking and demol-
fishing the villages surrounding the cantonment. But the senior officers asked them to keep calm for the time being and assured them of an appropiate action in future. On the night of 24 March Lieutenant Abbas who was under treatment at the military hospital breathed his last. After his death there was more anger in the cantonment and a tense situation prevailed there. It was being discussed that a plan has been prepared at the Brigade Head Quarters to attack Domodorpur and other villages in the neighborhood.
After this event Shahed Ali, Lieutenant Abbas’s attacker, left his village and settled at his workplace Lalbag Hat. He thought that since Lalbag Hat was far away from his village, the Pakistani army would not perhaps be able to apprehend him. After 25 March the Pakistani army began to search for the people who were responsible for Lieutenant Abbas’s death. In the village of Shommanipur there was a wicked man named Amzad who worked as a spy for the Pakistan army. As his stature was short, the people of the region called him ‘Gatia Amzad’ meaning short-statured Amzad. This gatia Amzad told the Pakistani soldiers that Shahed Ali had been living at Lalbag Hat. He also took them secretly to Lalbag Hat and identified Shahed Ali. Two Pakistani soldiers suddenly appeared from behind and captured him. Within a moment strong and stout Shahed Ali pushed them down on the ground. But another soldier struck him hard in the head with his rifle and still another one hit him in the left eye with his bayonet As a result, the eye stuck out of its place. The Pakistani soldiers put the seriously injured man at the back of their jeep and took him away from there beating him continuously. Later on, the members of Shahed Ali’s family came to know about this incident and began to search for him. Next day, his mutilated dead body was found at a muddy place near Lahirir Hat about 15 kilometers away from Lalbag Hat. There were several bullet injuries and traces of torture on his body. His eyes were plucked out and his brain was scattered out of the skull. Shahed Ali’s relatives brought his dead body to his village Shommanipur and buried him on the back side of his house.
Two days later some Pakistani soldiers along with their local associates turned up in the village of Shommanipur. These associates helped the soldiers recognize Shahed Ali’s house. Then the soldiers started their oppression on the members of Shahed Ali’s family. They hit Shahed Ali’s first wife Ashrafunnesa in the head but she was somehow able to flee with the help of the villagers. His second wife Komola Shundori was brutally tortured by the Pakistani soldiers. The people of that village still remember the horrible scene of that torture. Following these incidents Ashrafunnesa went insane and Komola Shundori fell dead.
Shahed Ali and his family members are immortal personalities. They were the torch bearers of freedom but could not see that freedom. They had both imaginative and inspirational power. They sacrificed their lives for freedom. The best thing we owe to them is our respect and honor, a
Translation: Professor M Jahurul Islam