They were the country s leading intelligentsia who were the guiding light for Bangalees. These brightest sons and daughters of the soil were instrumental in the mass movements against the disparity and repressive measures of the Pakistani rulers and contributed to the 1971 Liberation War efforts.
But, faced with impending defeat, the Pakistan army, aided by their bootlicker local collaborators, planned and brutally killed them to cripple the future nation intellectually so that it could never stand tall.
Sadly, 49 years after the country s independence, the nation is still in the dark about how many of these luminaries faced martyrdom lacking a comprehensive and final list of martyred intellectuals or even a definition of the term.