Agartala: Bangladesh wants India’s help to identify graveyards in the Indian territory where slain soldiers of Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War were buried, an official said here on Wednesday.
The Bangladesh government is likely to take the remains of the slain soldiers and try to protect the graveyards with the help of India, the official said.
A two-day meeting of officials of Bangladesh and India began in the city to discuss, among other issues, the identification of the burial spots of th 1971 Liberation War.
West Tripura District Magistrate Kiran Gitte led the Indian side at the meeting, while the Bangladesh team was headed by Brahmanbaria district’s Deputy Commissioner Nur Mohammad Majumder.
“If Bangladesh officials give us the list of the graveyards, we would definitely try to locate those places,” Gitte said.
During the nine-month long (March-December) war in 1971 which created an independent Bangladesh from East Pakistan, many Bangladeshi soldiers and ‘muktijoddhas’ (freedom fighters) who died fighting against Pakistan were buried in the Indian territory.
The Liberation War, as it is called in Bangladesh, later turned into a full-scale India-Pakistan war, culminating in fall of Dhaka and surrender of over 97,000 Pakistani soldiers to the Indian troops in December 1971.
More than 2,000 warrior of Bangladesh are believed to be buried in remote areas of Indian border states like Tripura, Meghalaya, Assam and West Bengal in 1971. Tripura, having a 856 km long border with the neighbouring country, was the war headquarters of Bangladesh Liberation War. The state also accommodated 16 lakh refugees from that country in the state when its own population was 15 lakh. (Agencies)