Appeal for Information on a Family Lost in the Shantahar Tragedy (1971)

 My classmate, Cadet Arshad Jamal, is one of the few survivors of the horrific massacre of the Bihari community in Shantahar on April 17–18, 1971, during the War of Liberation. His father (Abdul Ahad) — shown seated at the center in the photograph — had passed away three months before the turmoil engulfed East Pakistan, spared from witnessing the unspeakable violence that would soon claim so many lives.

Arshad himself — shown standing in the picture — survived only because one of our cadetmates, Ruhul Rabban (Baten), risked everything to save him. Ruhul Rabban sheltered Arshad and his immediate younger brother Kokab (not shown in the picture below) for two months (in his village home, 80 km from Naogaon/Shantahar), protecting them until in May when Pakistan military sheltered them. He and Kokab later lived with close relatives in Dhaka. Then after the fall of Dhaka, they took shelter in Dhaka Cantonment, managed by Indian Army and were taken as POWs — part of a group that included civilians seeking refuge alongside Pakistani military personnel.

Arshad’s older brother (Manzar) — seated beside their father — also survived the Shantahar tragedy and later settled in Karachi, where he passed away of natural causes. One of Arshad’s sisters, Tahera — standing in the middle among her sisters — was in Dhaka during the Holocaust and survived; she too later died in Karachi. Another older brother, Zubair Ahmed, who was in Dhaka, serving PIA, also survived.

But the fate of the rest of his family remains shrouded in uncertainty and grief.

Arshad fears that his mother — seated in the photograph — and his two sisters, Shanaz (about 22 years old at the time, a B.Com student at Eden Girls' College, Dhaka, shown standing beside him) and Sarwarnaz (then 16 years old, shown standing at the corner), as well as his youngest brother Nayyer (about 8 years old and not pictured), may have been killed during the violence. Yet he has never been able to confirm what truly happened to them.

For decades, Arshad has been searching — desperately, tirelessly — for any trace of his lost family in Bangladesh. Their disappearance remains an open wound, a story unfinished, a grief without closure.

If you have any information about the Abdul Ahad/Jamal family of Shantahar — survivors, witnesses, neighbors, or anyone who may have known them — please contact me. Even the smallest detail may help bring long‑awaited answers to a man who has carried this burden for more than half a century.

Thank you.

Habib Siddiqui