Bangladesh independent from today
Bangabandhu said moments before his arrest on the night of March 25, 1971
Minutes before his arrest on the black night of March 25, 1971, Bangabandhu foresaw troops coming to arrest him and uttered the words: “From today Bangladesh has become independent”, a close associate and witness to the incident at his 32 Dhanmondi residence said yesterday.
"They [Pakistani army] are coming to arrest me. I have decided to stay (at home)”, Haji Morshed, now 81, who stayed at the house from around 8:00am till the detention of Bangabandhu at midnight, quoted Bangabandhu as saying.
Morshed recalled that Bangabandhu made the comment around 10:00pm, sitting alone in his room, eyes closed, and minutes later then student leader Tabibur Rahman came to see him as the “last visitor” of the day and earnestly requested him to leave to evade death.
“He (Tabibur) hugged him and said 'Leave the house immediately, they (army) will kill you ... (in reply) Bangabandhu said 'If they don't get me they will massacre all the people and destroy the city...in tearful eyes Tabibur left the house”.
Morshed told the news agency that he had been a confidant of Bangabandhu since the 1946 Azad Hind Captain Rashid Ali Day when Bangabandhu was a student leader in Kolkata. On those eventful days of March 1971, he stayed with him all day from morning till late night.
He recollected that around 1:15am [March 26], the entire sky glowed with bright lights when he received a phone call. Bangabandhu came by his side asking him from which side the light was coming and went upstairs, he added.
Morshed said moments later someone shouted, “Hands up...mat maro (don't kill)” as he stood by a telephone set near the staircase of the house.
“In a fraction of a second, someone hit me with something on the back of my head and I lost consciousness. That was the last thing I could recall of that night”.
Another witness to those moments, former BNP state minister AKM Mosharaf Hossain, who observed the incident from the building adjacent to 32 Dhanmondi, said Pakistani troops fired shots as they entered the house, creating panic in the neighbourhood.
“I heard him (Bangabandhu) shouting, 'Stop firing' and they stopped”.
As Bangabandhu came downstairs, he saw Haji Morshed unconscious and bleeding, and seeing the scene he shouted “How dare you hit him, I want him alive”, he said.
“Bangabandhu knew and we all understood Pakistani troops were coming to capture him and feared they might also kill him...he was prepared to confront them bravely...he was not a coward”, said Hossain, who was a neighbour of Bangabandhu and was living at the adjacent building west of 32 Dhanmondi, which was called “Dara-e-Khas”.
Both the witnesses recalled that on the very day of March 25, several distinguished West Pakistanis and foreigners visited the 32 Dhanmondi residence to discuss the situation with senior Awami League leaders, workers and others, including government officials.
Haji Morshed remembered that one of the visitors to the house was police officer MA Awwal, who was then director of Ansar.
When Bangabandhu asked Awami League leader Barrister Amirul Islam where to find weapons to resist an imminent army crackdown, Awwal proposed that the weapons of the Ansar force, which were kept in police arsenal of every district police headquarters, could be used.
Student leader Sirajul Alam Khan apparently trashed the proposal, but later Bangabandhu sent Morshed along with Awwal to then Dhaka SP (superintendent of police) EA Chowdhury to ask him on his behalf to distribute weapons among policemen to resist the crackdown.
Morshed recalled that before the visit of Tabibur, senior Awami League leaders like Tajuddin Ahmed and Dr Kamal Hossain visited the house throughout the day till midnight.
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