After the complete liberation of the territory of Bangladesh on 16 December, 1971, the land emerged as a sovereign independent country. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman gave his call of independence at the 7th March historic meeting in Dhaka. There he directed the people to prepare for the "struggle for independence and freedom". The declaration was unequivocal. The Liberation War started on March 26, following the unleashing of a barbaric genocide by the Pakistani occupation forces on the Bengalees. Bangladesh was then already declared an independent land, with the Pakistani army termed invaders.
After a nine-month all-out armed struggle, Bangladesh was completely liberated by the Joint Forces of the Freedom Fighters and the Indian Allied Forces. The day was December 16. The historic moment occurred at a ceremony at the capital's then Race Course ground in the afternoon marking the surrender of the Pakistani soldiers to the Joint Forces. Although there were isolated skirmishes in the capital's suburbs on 16 December, the following day saw the first sunrise in free Bangladesh. That day and the following week became witness to the outburst of jubilations of the Dhaka residents. The city streets continued to reverberate with the victory cries of 'Joy Bangla', with Liberation Fighters on trucks and jeeps roaming the streets. People were standing on the two sides of the roads. Ladies and teenagers showered flower petals on the fighters from the roadside balconies of buildings. The elderly people compared the spectacle with the post-World War-II street scenes in Moscow, London, Paris, New York and dozens of big cities that became victims of Nazi aggression and occupation. It took a few more weeks for the frenziedly jubilant Dhaka to return to normal.
Meanwhile, Dhaka's air began to be thick with great news. Uponbeing pressured by a lot of world powers, the Pakistan government had decided to free Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib from an undisclosed placeof solitary internment. It was there where the great Benglalee leader of Bangladesh had remained interned for nine long months --- constantly threatened with execution. Meanwhile, the members of the Bangladesh Government-in-Exile returned to Dhaka.Upon their return to a rousing reception, the provisional cabinet took the helm of the government. Dhaka was in those days a war-ravaged city. By the December-end all the major 'killing fields' were discovered in the capital.
As days went by, grim news of killings and disappearances continued to pour in from the suburbs. To their great horror, the Dhaka residents discovered dozens of ditches and pits in the city's western and northern parts containing dozens of mutilated bodies. It didn't take much time to identify the corpses of the ill-fated victims, despite their being bullet-ridden and blind-folded. The bodies included those of the nation's talented figures from all branches of scholarship and creative endeavoursincluding journalism. Later, it came to be known that the intellectuals' only fault was that they had extended their strong support to the cause of East Pakistani Bengalees' separate identity. Most of them worked clandestinely for the Liberation War throughout the whole nine months. For their 'grave offence', they were picked up by the occupying army's civilian Gestapo in the first two weeks of December.
Dhaka, after its full liberation, emerged as a site of ruins in its 1st week, with structures, notably the collapsed ShaheedMinar, bearing the signs of shelling. Amid this spectacle of wreckage throughout Dhaka, people were preparing to welcome Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib to the liberated Bangladesh.The occupation forces unerringly followed in the footsteps of the victorious brutal forces like seen in the modern times. They had just started executing their evil plan of crippling the independent nation intellectually. Liberation visited the country just at that time.