Muzaffarabad Genocide was written by Chowdhury Shahid Kader and published in December 2014 as part of the series 1971: Genocide-Torture Directory (volume 4). It was produced under the umbrella of the 1971: Genocide-Torture Archive & Museum Trust, with series editorship credited to Professor Muntassir Mamoon.
The report documents the destruction of Muzaffarabad village (Patia Upazila, Chattogram), presenting it as an emblematic episode within the wider 1971 genocidal campaign. It describes Muzaffarabad as a highly educated, socially organised rural settlement that became militarily vulnerable after the Pakistani takeover of the broader Patia area in mid-April 1971. The narrative stresses how rumours and allegations were circulated to portray the village as a fortified base of resistance, which then served as a pretext for a punitive operation.
According to the text, on 3 May 1971 Pakistani forces, aided by local Razakar collaborators, surrounded Muzaffarabad and carried out an assault lasting roughly eight hours. The report states that approximately 300 villagers were killed, around 600 homes were set on fire, and approximately 200 women were subjected to sexual violence. It depicts killings as systematic and often intimate, including executions after people were dragged out from hiding places, alongside arson attacks that trapped families inside burning houses.
Critically, the report frames the violence as targeted group destruction rather than collateral damage. It notes that the village was predominantly Hindu (with only a very small number of Muslim households), and it repeatedly foregrounds how victim identification operated through religion and political labelling (“Hindu” and “Awami League supporter”) to justify murder, sexual violence, and dispossession. In that sense, the Muzaffarabad case is presented as a localised but structurally revealing instance of genocidal violence: central military force applied with local collaboration, driven by a logic of group elimination, terror, and the deliberate unmaking of community life through killing, rape, and mass arson.
