On the night of 25 March 1971, the Pakistani military launched a coordinated and brutal crackdown in what was then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The operation, codenamed Operation Searchlight, marked the beginning of one of the darkest chapters in South Asian history. Background Tensions had been...

On 25 March 1971, an ordinary spring night turned within hours into one of the most brutal episodes in modern history. Under an operation known as Operation Searchlight, the then Pakistani military junta launched a massive assault on unarmed, sleeping Bengali civilians. The attacks,...