By Anisur Rahman

   DHAKA, Nov 6, 2023 (BSS) - Three Liberation War heroes and senior brilliant officers of Bangladesh army – Brigadier Khaled Mosharraf, Colonel Nazmul Huda and Colonel Haidar – were killed in a chaotic situation on November 7, 1975, less than three months after the August 15, 1975 carnage.

   But no eyewitness to the brutal killing spree came out in public so far to say who their real assailants were and what exactly happened in the last few hours of their lives. Speculations continued for decades whether the three valiant Freedom Fighter officers were killed in a planned manner by fellow officers or they were exposed to wraths of a band of so-called left-leaning soldiers who dreamt of establishing a ‘classless army’ staging a ‘revolution’ on that day.

   After long 43 years since the episode occurred leaving a deep scar in the country’s history retired army Major Muktadir Ali, a captain at that time, spoke to this writer as a crucial eyewitness to the carnage as he saw their killings from a close proximity.

   The scene of the carnage was the premises of the MP Hostel of the then under construction parliament complex which the army’s 10 Bengal Regiment made their makeshift abode at that critical time while Muktadir was the “adjutant” of the unit. Muktadir passed away in August 2021.

Background of the episode

   As the August 15, 1975 carnage had exposed Bangladesh to a state of political wilderness virtually installing the Bangabandhu’s assailants to power, the country witnessed a military coup on November 3 the same year aimed visibly at disciplining the culprits. Khaled Mosharraf, who was the army’s crucial chief of general staff at that time, led the bloodless putsch, rallying supports of his compatriots in army. But the coup could never install him at the helm of affairs though he assumed to have had mobilized supports of most senior officers who strongly wanted the August 15 culprits, a handful of relatively junior officers, to be brought to justice. The situation created a vacuum of power for the subsequent three and half days until the country witnessed another coup, this time a blood-spattered one but very confusing as well.

   This November 7, 1975 coup, or more precisely a so-called sepoy mutiny, was led by left-leaning former military colonel and another 1971 veteran Abu Taher. But within hours after the so-called “sepoy-janata” or “soldier-people” revolution started, Taher and his associates in his Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD) visibly lost control over the process, exposing the military barracks to a complete chaos. The bloody event saw deaths of 12 military officers and wife of a senior officer while none of them had any apparent links to the Nov 3 putsch. Khaled and two of his senior comrades in army, Huda and Haidar, too were killed in the chaotic situation. As the outcome of the Nov 7 left-leaning coup, visibly right wing Major General Ziaur Rahman emerged as the strongman of Bangladesh, immediately discarding Taher from the scene to be exposed to gallows months later.

Success story ran dry

Khaled Mosharraf and his associates confined the then army chief Ziaur Rahman at his Dhaka Cantonment residence for his apparent reluctance or inaction to bring to book the August 15 culprits. His coup also unseated Khondker Mushtaque and confined him inside Bangabhaban. But virtually Khaled took little steps to consolidate his authority and total control over the situation. This allowed the August 15 killers to assassinate secretly Bangabandhu’s four close associates and independence leaders – Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmed, Captain Mansur Ali and Qamaruzzaman, inside Dhaka Central Jail on Nov 3 evening. But they managed to leave the country next day under a negotiation with Khaled and his compatriots, who were in dark about the massacre inside the high security prison.

The situation largely created a situation for Taher to go ahead with his short-lived ‘revolution’, mobilizing ordinary soldiers under the banner of a previously formed clandestine soldiers grouping called “Biplobi Sainik Sangstha”. The premature ‘revolution’ visibly rallied together some half motivated left leaning soldiers hungry for blood, rowdy crowds, many having no political motive, and some opportunists. Taher planned to get captive Zia beside him and his only success was to free him from captivity which soon appeared counter-productive for him while the bloody revolution episode lasted just for only several hours.

Khaled was at Bangabhaban presidential palace along with several officers in his fold when Taher’s soldiers began their action on Nov 6 evening, sending a clear message that the Nov 3 coup was upset. The situation forced Khaled to come out of Bangabhaban along with Huda and Haidar. According to former army chief General Moin U Ahmed, who was just a junior lieutenant with an assignment to protect Bangabhaban gate, wrote they left the presidential palace in a white Mercedes Benz car on late evening on Nov 7, which eventually appeared to be their last journey.
Earlier, staging the coup on Nov 3, Khaled got beside him the air force while he tried to mobilize to Dhaka some army units, which thought loyal to him, from different garrisons outside the capital and one of those units was 10 Bengal Regiment that came to Dhaka from Rajshahi and Bogra after a stopover in Savar cantonment on Nov 4 reached Dhaka on the next day and selected the MP hostel in parliament complex as its makeshift abode.

Khaled’s last hours

   Wife of Colonel Huda, Nilufar Huda, and several other sources familiar with the situation suggest that Khaled and the two other officers were initially in a dilemma about their next destination as they came out of Bangabhaban and initially decided to go the residence of now defunct paramilitary Rakkhi Bahini chief Colonel Nuruzzaman’s Dhanmandi residence, while he was abroad at that time. But reaching the house they decided to take refuge at 10 Bengal, stationed at the parliament complex, as it was raised during the Liberation War under Khaled’s supervision. Khaled contacted its commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Nawazeshuddin in a predawn call using the phone of that house.

   Muktadir who saw the final hours of the three 1971 heroes, said on receiving Khaled’s phone call in the makeshift 10 Bengal headquarters in parliament, Col Nawazeshuddin called the officers of the unit present there for consultation as the situation was heating up after the Nov 7 coup broke out. Though the soldiers of the 10 Bengal did not have any direct link to the Biplobi Sainik Sangstha, they came to know about the mutiny. “Rumours were spreading quickly that hundreds of ordinary soldiers were killed at different military units and the mutineers eventually reached the soldiers of 10 Bengal, turning the situation largely volatile,” he said.

   According to Muktadir 10 commissioned officers were there at the scene, one of them being an outsider, Major Nasir of armoured core who overnight took refuge at the unit wearing an ordinary soldier’s uniform to evade the mutineers rage. The senior most junior commissioned officer (JCO), however, assured the commanding officer that 10 Bengal soldiers would do no harm to the officers there.

“Let the bastards come in . . .”

   Muktadir said Nawazesh received a call from Colonel Huda that they were coming to the unit at Sher-e-Banglanagar. Nawazesh then called an officers meeting in the predawn hours and asked whether he should allow them to come to the Unit or not. He said along with two other officers suggested the commanding officer to tell Khaled not to come to 10 Bengal in view of the volatile situation. “But two of our officers -- captain Asad and captain Jalil – in a unanimous tone said, ‘let the bustards come in, we will sort them out,’” he recalled them as saying. At one point, he said, defying the commanding officer these two officers went out with some soldiers of companies under their direct command, to track down the three as they were on their way to 10 Bengal. But the three officers reached the unit on foot incidentally evading eyes of the two rowdy officers accompanied by soldiers with killer instinct. The three officers were forced to abandon their car as it met with an accident on the way that also required their treatment at Fatema Nursing Home at Sher-e-Banglanagar. Muktadir recalled that by that time Zia was freed by the mutineers and he assumed to have taken back army chief’s command.

   “Before Brig Khaled and two other senior officers arrived, Colonel Nawazesh received a call from Zia when he informed him that the three officers wanted to come to 10 Bengal . . . as I asked him what Zia told him, he said the chief asked him to welcome them and ensure their protection”.
   The three visibly upset officers sat in Nawazesh’s office room for sometimes and enquired about the situation. The commanding officer ordered the officers mess to serve them breakfast and they were taken to the first floor where the mess was set up. They were served with the routine officers’ mess breakfast – flat bread or “paratha” and egg along with tea. “They, however, did not eat the breakfast.”

   But, Muktadir said, Huda asked for a cigarette and “as I wanted to know his brand, Colonel Huda said Benson and Hedges”. “A packet of Benson & Hedges would cost 16 taka at that time and I sent a JCO to buy three packs of cigarettes with 50 taka which I had with me at that time.”

   “As the JCO came back with the cigarette, I gave one pack to Colonel Huda, one to Brigadier Khaled and kept the rest on the table as Colonel Haidar was a non-smoker. Col Huda started puffing cigarettes one after another while Brig Khaled was bringing out a stick and again putting it back in the packet repeatedly as he was thinking something,” Muktadir said revisiting his memory lane. Asad and Jalil by that time returned to the unit with their soldiers but for the time being could do nothing to manifest their killer instinct in presence of the rest of the officers but visibly were looking for opportunities to meet their instinct.

The killing spree

   “But the spread of rumours was generating mounting rage among the troops (sepoys or ordinary soldiers) . . . the situation prompted Col Nawazesh to call General Zia again and ending the talks he came in front of the troops,” Muktadir said.

   “The chief (Zia) told me that he is coming here to take the three senior officers’ -- he said in a loud voice. But the soldiers turned unruly with loaded weapons and were screaming,” he said. As the soldiers and officers rallied on the ground, the commanding officer mounted on the bonnet of a parked military jeep and asked the troops to calm down.

   Nawazesh, Muktadir said, again told the soldiers that he had a talk with the army chief who would be coming soon to take these three officers and also conveyed that the safety and security of these officers must be ensured as the Chief has asked him.
“At one point some troops shouted that ‘unless you give them at our disposal, we will consider you as one of them’ . . . I was standing beside the jeep and requested the Commanding Officer not to argue with them as they visibly were preparing to shoot him . . . Col Nawazesh gave up,” Muktadir said.

   “Col Nawazeshuddin then asked me to enquire when is the chief (Zia) coming, while Jalil and Asad were signalling their troops to go upstairs where the three officers were staying,” he recalled.

   The soldiers with thirst for blood immediately rushed upstairs and dragged Khaled and Huda down to the open space. “(It appeared) the soldiers fired thousands of gunshots . . . the guts in their intestinal systems came out of their stomach,” Muktadir said.

    Muktadir said as the soldiers ran upstairs; he came to the corridors of the downstairs of the MP hostel while Colonel Haidar came and stood beside him.
“As the soldiers were engaged in the killing spree, Haidar tried to bring out his pistol kept in his jacket. A soldier saw it and fired a single shot from a very close proximity and the bullet pierced through the side of his chest killing him instantly . . . I narrowly survived,” he said.

   According to Muktadir, as the killing spree was over Colonel Nawazesh informed Zia about the incident and Zia asked him to send the bodies to CMH while a captain was assigned to carry out the task.

   Muktadir said, so far he saw, Nawazesh, who was hanged years’ later on charges of his involvement in Zia’s murder, talked to Zia thrice during those fateful hours. But former election commissioner Brigadier Shakhawat Hossain said Nawazesh, his course mate, informed him later that Khaled himself briefly talked to Zia over phone while he was in 10 Bengal and they exchanged hot words. Nawazesh told Shakhawat that Zia, however, had asked him to protect Khaled and the other two senior officers.
Mystery unresolved

   The two officers with killing instinct, Jalil and Asad, were commissioned as first war course (SS) officers during the fag end of the Liberation War but according to Muktadir, they never could attain “the quality of good human beings or good officers”.

   “They had all the vices one can have – rude, inhuman, and corrupt and anything you can guess – even on Nov 6, they abused one of the officers in 10 Bengal as he cut off the phone lines of rooms of the officers as ordered by the commanding officer in the MP hostel,” Muktadir said. Another literature suggests Colonel Haidar earlier took punitive actions against one of them on corruption charges in Comilla Cantonment, where Colonel Huda was also the Brigade Commander which might have angered him.

   But, According to Muktadir, despite being an officer of the same unit, he still had no idea what made them so desperate to kill the three valiant officers who were their superiors since the war time.