Administration Losing Grip

Northern Advocate, 30 August 1947, Page 5

Administration Losing Grip

Casualties among both communities in West Punjab are steadily increasing and there is a growing number of attacks on trains.

Trains sent on Wednesday to Amritsar for refugees from East Punjab have returned empty. Correspondents say the civil administration in Northern India appears to be losing its grip of the situation as half a million refugees drift in a helpless and undirected state about East Punjab.

Communications are almost completely disorganised and frenzied mobs continue their massacring and burning.

When he reached Shaikpura, where an orgy of killing began on Monday, says the Daily Telegraph correspondent, not all the 800 corpses had been disposed of, because Moslems will not touch Sikh or Hindu bodies and there were no Hindus left to bury their dead. In the Sikh temple which had escaped the flames 1500 Sikhs had been cov/ering for 36 hours.

At least 100 of them, ihcluding women and children, were seriously wounded and many were dying. They were afraid to corrfe out lest they be shot by Moslem policemen or even by Moslem members of the Boundary Force. A British major could not convince these cowering Sikhs that an escort to a protected hospital at Amritsar awaited them.

However, the presence of civilian foreigners helped to reassure them. The temple door was unboiled and out staggered men, women and children in blood-soaked clothes and bearing terrible wounds. They were driven to hospital through jeering ranks of Moslem police, while the remainder scrambled hysterically into lorries.

The Moslem assistant District Commissioner who was detailed to direct this operation failed to turn up. The hospital proved to be staffed by one Sikh doctor and two orderlies. It was already full and the new patients were laid on the floor.