Bangladesh’s President Abdul Hamid, third right, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, second left, walk near female members of the Bangladesh army during the celebration of the country’s 44th Victory Day, at the national parade ground in Dhaka yesterday.

IANS
Dhaka
Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid took the salute from the military in Dhaka yesterday on the 44th anniversary of Pakistan’s defeat in the 1971 war that led to the birth of Bangladesh.
A contingent of freedom fighters, armed forces, security agencies and government ministries joined a colourful parade at the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Chief Justice S K Sinha along with prominent citizens attended the programme, Bd News
reported.
This was the first time an all-female contingent of the army joined the parade.
A huge portrait of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding father, was placed near the podium.
A national flag made with red and green leaves was placed beside the podium. Thousands of people enjoyed the two-hour parade.
The Liberation War ended with the end of the India-Pakistan war on this day in 1971, with some 93,000 Pakistani troops surrendering to the Indian army - the biggest such surrender
after World War II.
Border Guards Bangladesh officials and India’s Border Security Force exchanged wishes on the occasion.
Discussions, cultural functions and a get-together of people from various walks of life were part of a day-long programme at the Bangladesh assistant high commission in Agartala, the capital of India’s Tripura state.
Historian Bikach Chowdhury said Tripura had six to seven camps in four sectors from where the ‘Mukti Joddhas’ (freedom fighters) fought Pakistani forces in the 1971 war that
led to the creation of Bangladesh.
“More than 1,600,000 Bangladeshis - a number larger than the state’s then total population of 1,500,000 - had taken shelter in Tripura alone,” he said.
During the war, 10mn men, women and children from then East Pakistan took shelter in West Bengal, Tripura, Assam and Meghalaya.
The ‘Mukti Juddha’ (Liberation War), as it is called in Bangladesh, later turned into a full-scale India-Pakistan war, leading to the surrender of nearly 93,000 Pakistani soldiers in Dhaka on December 16, 1971.