Believe it or not that was the finding of a recent study as per Daily Times of Pakistan. Read the whole story to believe it.

Outraged Bangladeshies were naturally disgusted at this finding and few of us are in the process of establishing contact with this scholar Sarmila Bose. Abedin Chowdhury seems to have managed to get a reply from her and here is the text of her reply.

The Daily Times, Pakistan, report was brought to my notice. The heading given to the report is incorrect and not the finding of my study. The issue of rape in any case amounted to about 100 words out of a nearly 6,500 word paper on the subject of patterns of violence in 1971.

I certainly prefer people to read what I have actually written. Normally I would expect the paper to be revised after peer review and then published.

In the meantime you and your friends may wish to know that my paper, while summarizing the patterns from case-studies, noted that no case of rape was found in these specific violent incidents involving the Pakistan army - i.e., there was evidence of killing, but not rape. The paper clearly states that this result cannot be extrapolated to all incidents in that year.

As I pointed out in the discussion that followed, there is evidence elsewhere that rape certainly occurred in 1971, committed both by the army and by Bengalis. But it seems - from this study and other works - that it may not have occurred in all the instances it is alleged to have occurred.

  • Here is a NYTimes story from 1972 on rape victims (800K) that may shed some light for MS. Bose’s research.
  • Also the bible on this is Susan Brownmiler’s article that is hosted on Drishtipat’s women of 71 site
  • which has some great other research essays

    • Excerpts from the NYTimes article published in 1972:

    Menen got his information from the victim’s father. Pakistani
    soldiers had come to the little village by truck on day in October.
    Politely and thoroughly they searched the houses - “for pamphlets,”
    they said. Little talk was exchanged since the soldiers spoke a
    language no one in the little village could understand. The bride of
    one month gave a soldier a drink of coconut juice, “in peace”.

    At ten o’clock that night the truckload of soldiers returned, waking
    the family by kicking down the door of their corrugated iron house.
    There were six soldiers in all, and the father said that none of
    them was drunk. I will let Menen tell it:

    Two went into the room that had been built for the bridal couple.
    The others stayed behind with the family, one of them covering them
    with his gun. They heard a barked order, and the bridegroom’s voice
    protesting. Then there was silence until the bride screamed. Then
    there was silence again, except for some muffled cries that soon
    subsided.

    In a few minutes one of the soldiers’ came out, his uniform in
    disarray. He grinned to his companions. Another soldier took his
    place in the extra room. And so on, until all the six had raped the
    belle of the village. Then all six left, hurriedly. The father found
    his daughter lying o the string cot unconscious and bleeding. Her
    husband was crouched on the floor, kneeling over his vomit.

    After interviewing the father, Menen tracked down the young woman
    herself in a shelter for rape victims in Dacca. She was, he
    reported, “truly beautiful” , but he found her mouth “strange.” It
    was hard and tense. The woman doubted that she would ever return to
    her tiny village. Her husband of one month had refused to see her
    and her father, she said, was “ashamed.” The villagers, too, “did
    not want me.” The conversation, Menen wrote, proceeded with
    embarrassing pauses, but it was not without high tension.