Operation Searchlight: The night hell opened over Dhaka

On the night of March 25, the Dhaka cantonment was the sealed interior from which the assault on the city was launched. Khadim Hussain Raja, a key planner of Operation Searchlight, writes that the cantonment became a focal point as negotiations with Mujib collapsed and military preparations hardened into an operational decision.

The cantonment was not a neutral barracks zone. It was a fortress whose security had to be guaranteed before anything else: movement from the cantonment was to be tightly controlled, the telephone exchange had to be switched off first, and “security of cantonments” was listed in the operation plan as a basic requirement for success. By the evening of March 25, Raja says, only a narrow circle knew that action would begin that night, and even then the troops were made to wait until after the president's departure was secured. The effect was eerie: the city above ground still seemed suspended in uncertainty, while inside the cantonment the machinery of the crackdown had already been set in motion.

The cantonment was also a place of fear and anticipation, because Pakistani officers believed it might itself become a target if the Bengali side moved first. Raja writes that between March 7 and 24, meetings were held among East Pakistani officers and ex-servicemen. There were also fears of a possible move on Tejgaon airport and the cantonment. The presence of the 2nd East Bengal Regiment at Joydebpur, he suggests, left the cantonment feeling exposed.

Dacca Airport, also known as Tejgaon Airport, was one of the key strategic pivots of Operation Searchlight. In his later recollections, Archer Blood, the US Consul General in Dhaka during the 1971 crisis, noted that American officials had observed PIA aircraft arriving in Dhaka carrying groups of military-age men dressed in khaki slacks and white shirts, who were then marched into waiting trucks. The consulate concluded that these were soldiers being discreetly brought in to reinforce the Pakistani position.

Rao Farman Ali Khan, a senior Pakistani military officer and one of the principal planners of the crackdown in East Pakistan, underscores in his account the centrality of the airport on 25 March: the operation could not begin until Yahya Khan had departed safely, and the president was taken to the airport in secrecy. In the operational plan, the 43rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment was assigned to airport security, making Tejgaon one of the first areas to be secured.

On the night of the crackdown, Mirpur was a primary objective on the military's “mental map”. According to the operational schemes documented by Siddiq Salik, the Pakistan Army's public relations officer, the Field Regiment was specifically tasked with securing the Second Capital along with the adjoining localities of Mohammadpur and Mirpur. This strategic alignment suggests that Mirpur was integrated into the initial assault plan from the very beginning, treated as a vital belt that had to be neutralised before the city centre was even hit.

Wireless communications of the Pakistan Army on the night of March 25 reveal a series of desperate transmissions: initial reports claimed that police were firing on civilians in Mirpur, only to be corrected moments later. The gunfire was actually erupting at the boundary where Mohammadpur blurred into Mirpur. In the darkness, a car carrying civilians managed to flee towards Ayubnagar, now Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, to spread word of the attack, while a military platoon had already been dispatched to intercept the growing resistance in that sector.

According to operational accounts, the Pakistani military managed to capture the EPR troops stationed in Mirpur without meeting resistance. While some of these Bengali soldiers managed to flee, others were summarily executed following their capture.

Mirpur served as a base for non-Bengali residents (often referred to as Biharis) who supported the military. In the immediate aftermath of the crackdown, these groups moved into adjacent areas to lock and establish possession of Bengali-owned houses.

Wireless communications confirm that by the early hours of March 26, the northern sectors, including those linked to Mirpur, were reported as being under control as part of the operation's "first phase."

The Second Capital (Sher-e-Bangla Nagar) and the Martial Law Administrator (MLA) Headquarters were strategic focal points for the Pakistani military during Operation Searchlight.

Lt General Tikka Khan, the governor and martial law administrator of East Pakistan as well as the commander overseeing the military crackdown, and his senior staff were physically present at this command centre to supervise the operation in Dhaka as well as in key areas across what was then East Pakistan.

Mohammadpur was a key strategic zone for the Pakistani military in northern Dhaka. One of the specific targets in the area was the Physical Training Institute. Military intelligence appeared to suspect that the site contained hidden arms.

During the night, wireless exchanges show Control asking repeatedly about progress at the institute. The reporting unit replied that the search had not yet produced any weapons, although troops had already been posted there. This suggests that Mohammadpur was a site of targeted searches carried out on the assumption that resistance infrastructure might be concealed there. Later in the war, the institute would acquire an even darker notoriety as an al-Badr torture camp.

Mohammadpur area also played a role in the broader machinery of coercion and occupation that followed the first assault. Ahmed Sofa's account suggests that Mohammadpur, along with Mirpur, became a base for non-Bengali residents who actively supported the crackdown. As terror emptied many parts of the city, he observed that such groups moved into adjacent neighbourhoods, locked Bengali-owned houses in order to establish possession over them, and took part in a wider atmosphere of looting, intimidation, and dispossession. In this sense, Mohammadpur appears not only as a military sector but also as a place where the social consequences of the operation quickly became visible.

Wireless communications of the Pakistan Army on the night of March 25 also indicate that Mohammadpur formed part of the northern search grid for high-profile Awami League leaders and other political targets. While the forces in this sector blocked roads, secured communications points such as the Second Capital Exchange, and detained unnamed individuals, some of the principal targets had already escaped before the troops arrived.

Farmgate was where one of the first army columns from the cantonment met organised obstruction. Siddiq Salik writes that the first column from the cantonment was halted at Farmgate by a large freshly felled tree trunk, old vehicles, and even a disabled steamroller. On the city side of the barricade stood several hundred Awami Leaguers shouting “Joy Bangla”. Salik, listening from HQ MLA, heard slogans give way to rifle shots, then automatic fire, then light machine-gun bursts; after about fifteen minutes the noise declined and the column moved on.

Wireless communications record the same scene in more technical language: a force just short of Farmgate reported that it was clearing roadblocks with explosives and other materials, with infantry spread around the area and a bulldozer moving forward.

Farmgate is important because it shows how Searchlight treated civilian resistance at street level. The wireless communications indicate a standing order that anyone seen putting up roadblocks should be shot on the spot, and that the houses beside such barricades could be demolished.

Dhanmondi 32, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's residence, was one of the designated first-wave targets of Operation Searchlight. The plan ordered the army to break into Mujib's house, arrest everyone present, and assigned a commando platoon to carry out the task. Siddiq Salik's account provides the detail: the raiding platoon, led by Lt Col Z. A. Khan and Major Bilal, first used a rocket launcher to clear a barrier on the way. On reaching the house, it came under fire from the armed guard at the gate, neutralised the guards, scaled the wall, and forced its way to Mujib's room. Minutes later, Brigade Major Jaffar was heard on the wireless: “Big bird in the cage... others not in their nests.”

The Pakistan Army's plan also targeted other specific addresses in Dhanmondi, including Road 29 and House 148, as part of a pre-planned “residential hunt” for political figures, safe houses, and hidden resources. Wireless communications from that night reveal a clinical yet frantic execution of this manhunt. While the capture of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was achieved, other primary targets, including Tajuddin Ahmad, had already evaded the cordons.

In response to these failed apprehensions, the military command issued a draconian directive: a house-to-house, block-by-block search of Dhanmondi. Troops were ordered to “inspect” every resident, arresting those deemed important while “returning” the rest, a process that turned a quiet residential suburb into a high-stakes screening centre.

Archer Blood, the then US consul general in Dhaka, described in his telegrams a “reign of terror” in which the authorities utilised pre-prepared hit lists to seek out and eliminate Awami League supporters. It was a concrete pattern of encirclement aimed at liquidating the intellectual and political core of the Bengali movement before it could galvanise.

The human cost of this strategy is captured vividly in the fate of Lt Commander Moazzem Hossain. His wife, Kohinoor Hossain, recounts that at about 6 am on March 26, soldiers accompanied by a collaborator surrounded their house near Elephant Road, wrecked it within minutes, lined up the men outside, and called out for Moazzem. He stepped forward and identified himself. Five soldiers targeted their rifles towards Moazzem and said, "Bol Pakistan Zindabad."(Say Pakistan zindabad) He proudly pointed his index finger towards them and said: "Ek dofa zindabad." For he had only one dofa (demand) -- to liberate Bangladesh. Five rifles started shooting at once. He fell on the ground and said again, "Ek dofa zindabad."

The wireless communication confirms the army's account: the force reported that it went to apprehend Lt Commander Moazzem, that he resisted, was killed, and that his body was in their custody.

Dhaka University was one of the key areas marked out for destruction. The Searchlight plan reproduced in Khadim Hussain Raja's A Stranger in My Own Country ordered that the university be occupied and searched, with Iqbal Hall, Jagannath Hall, and Liaquat Hall surrounded after curfew and the cutting of communications. What followed was not a cordon-and-search operation but a campus-wide massacre. In the wireless exchanges recorded by Dr Muhammad Mozammel Hussain, the university force reported that there were “so many buildings” it had to “reduce each one in turn”, while Control promised that the “Big Brothers” would arrive to help “knock down the buildings”. Escape routes west of the railway line were cut off, trapping students and residents within the killing ground. Siddiq Salik later wrote that by around 2 a.m. the halls were still resisting, prompting orders for troops to use rocket launchers, recoilless rifles, and mortars; by dawn, he said, the campus had been subdued. In Archer Blood's recollection, the army machine-gunned the dormitories, likely used mortars, and murdered university men, including Hindu professors.

The cruelty was systematic. That night Pakistani troops carried out mass killings in Jagannath Hall, Iqbal Hall, and Rokeya Hall. University authorities later compiled a list of 195 martyrs, but multiple accounts place the number killed on campus that night at between 250 and 300. At Jagannath Hall, the dead included 4 teachers, 36 students, and 21 employees and guests. Survivors and later reports state that six students were forced to dig graves and were then killed.

In Meghna Guhathakurta's account from the nearby teachers' flats, her father, Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, was shot after soldiers asked his religion and he replied, “Hindu”; Professor Muniruzzaman and members of his family were also shot nearby. By the following day, witnesses described bodies lying on roads, in courtyards, and around the halls, with the smell of blood and burning lingering across the campus.

The Shahbagh-Hotel Intercontinental-Radio Pakistan belt was central to controlling what Dhaka could know and what the outside world could see. The Searchlight plan directed that Radio, TV, and the telephone exchange be cut or seized at the outset. The transcript confirms that, in the first phase, “TV, Radio [were] under control, Exchange captured.” At the same time, the Hotel Intercontinental was turned into a tightly controlled zone for elites and the foreign press. The army confined foreign journalists there, seized their notes, and expelled them the following day. Siddiq Salik also notes that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was escorted from his hotel room after dawn and driven to the airport.

The significance of this belt lay in its control over information. The radio station was seized to monopolise the city's communications, while the hotel was used to confine journalists at the very moment when evidence of widespread killings was accumulating elsewhere.

Rajarbagh was a first-wave military target. Khadim Hussain Raja's plan identifies the Reserve Police at Rajarbagh, numbering around 2,000, as one of the Bengali armed units to be neutralised, setting approximately 0105 hours for troops to move against the Rajarbagh Police Headquarters and nearby stations. Siddiq Salik's operational summary likewise assigns the 32 Punjab Regiment to disarm the Rajarbagh police.

A direct eyewitness account preserved in Deutsche Welle comes from Constable Abu Shama. He recalls that by 10:30 pm, a wireless operator from the Tejgaon patrol area warned that 37 truckloads of armed troops were leaving the cantonment for multiple locations across Dhaka. At around 11 pm, police at Rajarbagh opened fire on a military convoy near Shantinagar. By 11:30 pm, the Pakistan Army launched a full assault using tanks, mortars, and heavy machine guns.

Abu Shama's testimony is stark about the outcome. Limited police resistance was met with overwhelming force, as the army fired “thousands of rounds”. Tin-roofed barracks caught fire, and fleeing policemen were shot indiscriminately. After the dawn azan, tanks breached the gates and trucks entered to remove the bodies. Abu Shama recalled seeing between 100 and 150 police corpses before being beaten, bayoneted, and tortured for days.

The wireless transcript corroborates the scale of destruction, noting orders to clear all bodies before first light, recording large quantities of arms seized, and stating that “the dead bodies cannot be counted at the moment” as the police lines burned. Rajarbagh thus stands as one of the clearest documented sites where armed resistance was crushed through overwhelming firepower, followed by systematic body removal and custodial brutality.

Kamalapur Railway Station appears in the record primarily as a first-phase capture point in the sealing of Dhaka. The Searchlight appendix ordered the city to be sealed off by road, rail, and river. In the transcript, unit 26 reported to higher control that “Kamlapur R.S. captured” in the same breath as the capture of Ramna Police Station, the seizure of TV and Radio, and the control of the telephone exchange. This places Kamalapur squarely within the opening sequence by which the army immobilised the city's communications and transport routes.

Kamlapur belongs in the genocide record because mass violence in a city depends on the control of exits and routes. Once Kamlapur was secured, one of Dhaka's major rail arteries was under military command just as police lines, EPR headquarters, and student halls were being hit. In other words, Kamlapur was part of the mechanism that made escape and communication more difficult for the civilian population during the killings.

Purana Paltan enters the record through officers watching a burning city from the central administrative zone. In the transcript, a voice from the Commissioner's Office reported: “we could see a lot of fire in area Purana Paltan. Is it the Head Office (of Awami League), or some other place?” Almost immediately, another question followed: “What about People's Daily?” The answer from 26 was unequivocal: “Blasted … Our two men seriously wounded … and two minor injuries.”

Pilkhana, headquarters of the East Pakistan Rifles (EPR), was a priority target during Operation Searchlight because it housed a large concentration of Bengali armed personnel. Khadim Hussain Raja notes that around 2,500 EPR members had to be neutralised, while Siddiq Salik records that the 22 Baluch Regiment, already positioned inside the compound, was tasked with disarming them and seizing the wireless exchange.

The wireless conversation summarised the result: Unit 16, identified as Pilkhana, met very little resistance, killed four, wounded about ten, and was in full control within about half an hour of H-hour.

According to Nayek Rezaul Karim, EPR personnel had raised the flag of independent Bangladesh on March 23. By March 25, Baluch troops had tightened control, disarming many Bengali soldiers. Around midnight, firing began, followed by indiscriminate killing. Resistance quickly collapsed due to the lack of weapons.

Shahjahan Mia, a security guard, recalled that while 400-500 managed to escape, many others were captured. Hundreds were killed that night, while detainees were later taken to the Mohammadpur Physical Training Centre and other sites, where they were tortured and executed.

Among the victims were Subedar Major Shaukat Ali, Naib Subedar Shamsul Haq, and Nayek Mohiuddin. Eyewitness accounts also suggest that unarmed EPR personnel were killed in multiple locations across Dhaka. The exact number of those killed in Pilkhana remains uncertain, but it is widely believed to be in the hundreds.