Bohala Genocide (Bengali: বহলা গণহত্যা) is a short documentary volume in the Genocide-Torture Index series (no. 16), written by Azharul Azad Jewel and published in March 2015 by the 1971: Genocide-Torture Archive & Museum Trust. The book forms part of a wider national effort to document local killing fields and survivor memory before they are lost, and to create an evidence-based counter to denial and minimisation.
The report locates the atrocity in Bohala, a locality in Biral Upazila, Dinajpur, and identifies the site as a recognised killing field where, the author states, around 42 unarmed civilians were brutally murdered by the Pakistan Army. By placing Bohala within the wider Dinajpur theatre of 1971, the book shows how mass violence travelled beyond major cities and battlefronts into rural settings, where civilians could be seized and killed with little warning.
A key part of the narrative reconstructs what happened in mid-December 1971. The book states that the Bohala massacre occurred on Monday evening, 13 December, and that two days later, on Thursday morning, 16 December, local people dug a large pit near the killing site and buried bodies that had been left exposed. It describes the condition of the bodies and the difficulty of identifying victims, emphasising how disposal and concealment were integral to the violence, not an accidental aftermath.
The book also anchors the atrocity to place and property, noting that the killing field stood on land owned by Khaliluddin, who is identified as the father of a later Union Parishad chairman, which underscores how genocide sites can sit in plain sight within everyday landscapes. This local anchoring matters for public history: it ties the genocide to a specific geography that can be mapped, visited, and protected, rather than being left as an abstract national tragedy.
In linking Bohala to genocide narratives, the book’s core argument is about pattern, purpose, and civilian targeting. The victims are described as defenceless people, killed in a deliberate operation at a designated site, followed by hurried burial as communities attempted to cope with fear, decomposition, and the risk of further violence. In this way, Bohala Genocide shows how the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide operated at micro-scale: through concentrated episodes of organised killing, the destruction of civilian security, and the long afterlife of trauma and contested memory that makes documentation itself a form of resistance.