Hasnabad, West Bengal
June 4
An estimated three million Hindus almost half the entire minority religious community of East Pakistan, have been driven across the border into India by Pakistani troops and Muslim zealots, Indian officials at the refugee reception camps alleged today.

The allegation is, based on a rough breakdown of the 4,500,000 Bengalis who have flocked into West Bengal and other border states in the past two months. According to the Indians, about a third are Muslims and the remainder Hindus.

Checks taken with border police and with groups of refugees crossing the river at Hasnabad, south east of Calcutta, make it clear that the number of Muslim refugees has dwindled to a trickle. At the earlier stage of the exodus it appeared that as many Muslims were fleeing as Hindus.

This trend was evident at all border entry points which are accessible to journalists. At Hasnabad I discovered Hindu migrants who had fled from the Khustia district alleging that the army swept through their villages burning the houses of Hindus.

Others said that they had escaped to India after local Muslim zealots, encouraged by non-Bengali Muslims, had persecuted them during the past few weeks. A few claimed that Pakistan Army troops had given them a week to leave the country.

These people are simple peasants, too unsophisticated to concoct propaganda stories. One labourer from Khustia told me that from their hiding place in the fields he and other villagers saw troops burning dawn all their houses.

Others, possessing nothing but the clothes on their backs, said the army had combed the district of Jessore and had asked local non-Bengalis to point out houses of Hindus and members of the Awami League. Entire villages had been razed to the ground, they claimed.

Further to the north where almost 100,000 Hindus are still crossing into the cholera-affected Nadia district in India every day, the, latest arrivals claim that the army and local Muslims have given them one week to leave the country.

"The Army men are giving our property to the Bengali Muslims", a farmer, Mr Rishikesh Choudhury said.

During a recent tour of the refugee camps in Tripura I discovered further evidence which suggests that the initial reports of the Army's acts of persecution have been overtaken by Hindu-Muslim tensions.

Dr S. Buttachrea, a medical practitioner of Chittagong, told me that he had been living in a section of the town predominantly inhabited by Muslims.
"On April 29 about 15 attacked my house and burnt it down. They kidnapped two of my sisters-in-law and took them away. I managed to flee to India with the rest of my family,"

Other accounts, taken at random, corroborate these reports and while their reasons for leaving Pakistan might vary, every Hindu is adamant on one single point: he will not return to Pakistan on any account and it would therefore appear that India will be saddled with a permanent refugee problem.

Mr Cornelius Gallagher, member of the United States House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, who toured the Indian border today told journalists he was convinced that "genocide of no small magnitude " had been committed in East Bengal.

"When I came here I came with an open mind. But after meeting some of the evacuees I am now convinced that terrorism and other barbarities have been committed,"

Mr Gallagher said he was returning to the United States to mobilize a massive relief programme.