RANGPUR, April 4, 2025 (BSS) - The “Dakhiganj Baddhyabhumi Dibash”, martyrdom day of ten prominent intellectuals of Rangpur, was observed with deep tributes paid to them at ‘Dakhiganj Shwashan Baddhyabhumi Smriti Soudha’ here this afternoon.
 
Leaders of ''Dakhiganj Shwashan Baddhyabhumi Smriti Sangrakhshan Parishad (DSBSSP)' placed wreaths at 'Dakhiganj Shwashan Baddhyabhumi Smriti Soudha' and organised a memorial discussion there marking the day.
  
Member-secretary of DSBSSP Advocate Polash Kanti Nag presided over the discussion.  
 
Babu Ramakrishna Somani, Nripendra Nath Roy, Amjad Hossain, Dr. Mafizul Haque Mantu, Shushanto Bhowmick and others from the martyrs’ families spoke at the event.
 
Members of the martyred intellectuals' families and common people participated in the programmes followed by lighting of candles in the evening.  
 
Commemorating the supreme sacrifices of the ten martyred intellectuals of Rangpur on this day in 1971, the speakers paid due respect to the three million martyred Bangalees during the War of Liberation.  
 
They said the Pakistani occupation forces with their local collaborators and non-Bengali Beharis caught 11 brilliant Bangalees from their houses in the city on March 27 in 1971, took them to Rangpur cantonment and conducted barbaric torture on them.
 
Later in the small hours on April 4, 1971, the Pakistani soldiers and their local collaborators took them to ‘Dakhiganj Shwashan’ in the city and gunned them down there.
 
By the grace of the Almighty, one of them, Dr Dinesh Chandra Bhowmick alias Mantu Daktar, who received eight bullets, escaped death during indiscriminate firing.   
 
Later, Mantu Daktar was taken to India where he underwent treatments and joined the 'Mukti Bahini', took training and took part in the War of Liberation heroically as a brave freedom fighter to liberate the nation.
 
The martyrs are: Advocate Mahfuz Ali Zorjes, Khitish Halder, Ehsanul Haque Dulal, Rafiqul Islam Rafique, Dhirendranath Shanti Chaki, Durga Das Adhikari, Gopal Chandra, Tofazzal Hossain Moharram, Uttam Kumar Adhikari and Pagla Darbesh.