Journey On Death Train'

Northern Advocate, 30 August 1947, Page 5

Journey On Death Train'

The Lahore correspondent of the British United Press, in a delayed dispatch, described a journey in a “death train” travelling from Delhi to Lahore and crowded with refugees. A few minutes after the train left Maur, 150 miles north of Delhi, the brakes were applied and scores of bearded Sikhs, carrying lances tipped with razor-sharp blades, swarmed on the train in the half-light of dawn. They ran from door to door of the compartments seeking Moslems. The correspondent watched dozens of Sikhs prise open the door of a neighbouring compartment. A young Moslem inside tried desperately to hold the door shut.

Spears beaf) him, slashing his stomach and thighs as the Sikhs fought fiercely for the “privilege” of getting him.

The Sikhs took no notice of the correspondent, but laughed and jeered as they speared the Moslem. Another group of * blood-maddened Sikhs battered at the door of a compartment in which were two American correspondents, but a couple of belated warning shots from the train’s police guard caused the Sikhs to jump off the train and hide behind bushes in the sand dunes beside the line. There was a small burst of harmless rifle fire from the guards and the train started again.

When the train reached Bhatinda half an hour later, Captain Peter

Douglas, of Surrey, whose Gurkha troops were keeping order, told the correspondent things were getting worse.

He said Moslems attacked one train carrying Hindu refugees five times on one night between Pershawar and Lahore.

Captain Douglac shepherded 150 wounded Moslems aboard the correspondent’s train. The Sikhs had attacked them as they fled from villages four days earlier, since when they had not eaten.

Blood from their wounds still marked their garments.

One-third had to be carried on to the train. One woman died as she awaited her turn.

At Ferozepore, less than 10 miles from the Pakistan border, hundreds of Moslems refugees jammed into the compartments, climbed on to the roof or hung to the sides. The Rev. Charles Moffett, a missionary, told the correspondent he saw at least 150 bodies, nearly all Moslems, lying in Ferozepore’s streets.

One woman on the train was the sole survivor of a village which the Sikhs attacked. A blow meant to behead her had cut her baby in arms in half. Less than five miles inside the Pakistan border the correspondent saw many Sikh bodies bearing similar stab-wounds, but inflicted by Moslems.