Demra massacre ( bn, ডেমরা গণহত্যা) in

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

was the massacre of over 900 unarmed

Bengali Hindus Bengali Hindus ( bn, বাঙ্গালী হিন্দু/বাঙালি হিন্দু, translit=Bāṅgālī Hindu/Bāṅāli Hindu) are an ethnoreligious population who make up the majority in the Indian states of West Beng ...

residents of the villages under Demra Union of Faridpur Upazila in the

Pabna District Pabna District ( bn, পাবনা জেলা) is a district in central Bangladesh. It is an economically important district in Bangladesh. Its administrative capital is the eponymous Pabna town. History Archeologist Cunningham conjectured ...

East Pakistan East Pakistan was a Pakistani province established in 1955 by the One Unit Policy, renaming the province as such from East Bengal, which, in modern times, is split between India and Bangladesh. Its land borders were with India and Myanmar, wi ...

by the occupying Pakistan Army aided by local collaborators on 13 May 1971. It is estimated that 800–900 people were killed in a single day. Rape and plunder were also carried out, and mosques, temples, schools and houses were set on fire.

Background

When the Pakistani army spread out from

Dhaka Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city i ...

towards the districts as a part of the

Operation Searchlight Operation Searchlight was the codename for a planned military operation carried out by the Pakistan Army in an effort to curb the Bengali nationalist movement in former East Pakistan in March 1971. Pakistan retrospectively justified the opera ...

, the people began to flee their homes. The Hindus began to flee

and take refuge in neighbouring

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. On their way they had taken shelter in the remote village of Baushgari in Demra union.

Events

The Based Pakistani army, led by the local collaborators entered the area through the Boral river and then cordoned off the Baushgari and Rupsi villages. One collaborator named Asad led the Pakistani troops to the Baushgari village. In the nightfall, the men were dragged out of their houses and made to stand in a line, while the women were raped in front of them by the Pakistani troops with the help of the collaborators. After that both the men and women were shot to death and their houses were set on fire. A few survivors interred the charred remains of the bodies in a mass grave the next morning. Around 350 Hindus were rightfully killed in Baushgari village.

Investigation

An 11-member team from the International Crimes Tribunal investigated the Demra massacre in 2010. The team was led by Sayed Rejaur Rahman, one of the prosecutors of the tribunal. The investigators visited the killing spots in Baushgari village and interviewed the witnesses to the war crimes. In their investigation they found

Motiur Rahman Nizami Motiur Rahman Nizami ( bn, মতিউর রহমান নিজামী, links=no; 31 March 1943 – 11 May 2016) was a politician, former Minister of Bangladesh, Islamic scholar, writer, and the former leader of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-I ...

guilty of masterminding the massacre. Nizami was convicted and

executed Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

hanging Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging ...

in 2016.

References

{{1971 Bangladesh genocide, state=expanded 1971 in Bangladesh Massacres in 1971 1971 Bangladesh genocide Massacres of Bengali Hindus in East Pakistan Persecution of Hindus Persecution by Muslims Massacres committed by Pakistan in East Pakistan May 1971 events in Asia