Bangladesh goes numb after learning about mass grave horror

Dhaka, Feb.28 (ANI): The discovery of a mass grave on Friday, which included the mutilated body of the Bangladesh Rifles Director General among 38 other officers in a small ditch at the premises of BDR headquarters, has numbed people in Bangladesh.

People here are perturbed after learning about the kind of savagery meted out to the deceased. Rescuers fear there might be more unmarked mass graves at Pilkhana.

Major General Shakil Ahmed's corpse was pitted with bullet holes and marks of bayonet charge. Many of the bodies were in briefs as uniforms of the officers littered the lawn inside BDR HQ.

"We can tell from the bodies many of the officials were first shot and then bayoneted to death," The Daily Star quoted Major Momtajur Rahman of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) as saying.

"We have gathered that the bodies were carried there by two trucks," Major Momtaj added.

A group of heavily armed border troops led the acts of mindless violence.

They said they were only protesting discriminations. But now as the extent of brutalities emerges, rescuers say, it seems the bloodbath might have been instigated by "some unseen quarters with an ill motive".

"Officers' houses were looted and their cars set on fire. The two-storey residence of the DG was left in ruins. The staircase there was stained with blood," said a rescuer who would not speak on record.

The mutineers ransacked and burned the house of slain Colonel Mujibul Haq.

"We suspect some of those missing were killed and reduced to ashes," he said citing information gleaned from some BDR jawans who opted to stay put after the revolt ended Thursday evening.

The mass grave is located behind the mortuary of BDR Hospital, about a kilometre off Darbar hall, where the bloody mutiny erupted at an assembly of BDR officials and jawans Wednesday morning.

On Friday, Army and Rab rescuers found a mass grave on the premises of BDR headquarters and recovered bodies.

With three more bodies pulled out of manholes, fatalities in the 33-hour bloody mutiny at BDR Pilkhana rose to 62. Those include around 50 army officers.

Of those retrieved dead, 18 were too badly decomposed to be identified immediately.

Rescuers were yet to trace at least 50 officers and late BDR chief Major General Shakil Ahmed's wife, the Daily Star quoted unnamed sources as saying. (ANI)