As Bangladesh celebrates the golden anniversary of its independence from the brutal Pakistani regime on March 26, thoughts and prayers must turn to hundreds and thousands of women who were abducted, raped and kept as sex slaves by Pakistan Army.

Under Operation Searchlight, Pakistani troops rampaged through cities and countryside, raping and assaulting and killing young girls to grandmothers with impunity. The hapless women who survived these gangrapes were taken to make-shift sex camps for the troops. They were locked behind iron doors in dungeons, fed only once and many times just enough to keep the body and soul together.

It was for the first time in modern history that rape was used as a weapon of war by the Pak army. Gen. A. A. Khan Niazi did not deny rapes were being carried out and opined, in a Freudian tone, “You cannot expect a man to live, fight, and die in East Pakistan and go to Jhelum for sex, would you?” More than 400,000 women were violated, brutalised and killed by the Pakistani Army.

And yet, after 50 years, there has been no international sanction on Pakistan for letting such a heinous crime go unpunished. There is an urgent need for the UN to set up a commission to probe one of the most horrendous chapters of modern world so that such bestiality is never brought upon the hapless women anywhere in the world.

It was bestiality of the worst kind. Geoffrey Davis was an Australian doctor who was asked by the International Planned Parenthood Federation on behalf of the Bangladesh government to facilitate large-scale adoption of war babies born to Bangladeshi women during the war. Davis, who spoke to countless women, had this to say:

Villages and cities were first bombed and then the Pakistani troops would pounce on the hapless citizens. Men were shot at will and women were segregated. Women were tied to trees and gangraped, their breasts were hacked off and since many of them died during this horrible torture, their bodies were dumped in mass graves.

Hundreds and thousands of women locked up in make-shift camps where they were raped almost every hour.  Some women may have been raped as many as eighty times in a night . Countless died during this atrocious assault and even more were killed as part of the Pakistan Army campaign of slaughter and destruction.

These stories of bestiality were repeated across the country, including Dhaka. Girl students of Dhaka University bore the brunt of the Pak assault--they had no place to run to for shelter as troops raided hospitals, raped them at will and those who were alive were taken to military camps for ritualistic rapes and orgies by the Pak officers and men. In seven days after the liberation, over 300 girls were recovered from different places in Dhaka. In seven days after liberation about 300 girls were recovered from different places around Dacca where they had been taken away and kept confined by the Pakistani army men. All of them were half dead or mentally deranged.

Though most of the women were Muslims, thousands of Hindu women too fell victim to the Pak army savage cruelty. According to accounts, thousands of them were captured to become sex slaves in military cantonments, when the hapless girls tried to hang themselves with their clothing, their garments were taken away. Then they tried to hang themselves with their long hair, they were shaved bald. Several of them died a horrible death. Those who survived were let off when they were five to six month pregnant with the taunt that ``When my son is born, you must bring him back to me’.”

These horrendous events may have been relegated to footnotes in the glorious liberation struggle of Bangladesh but for hundreds and thousands of families in Bangladesh, and India, they remain a bleeding thorn in their hearts.