The Qadian Diary — Page 57
Letters, Correspondence, and Articles 43 use of privately owned aeroplanes in order to keep ourselves in touch with the outside world and arrange our mails to be carried to, and brought from Lahore. Occasionally the planes also flew to Gurdaspur to contact District authorities (once it was actually sent for by Malik Haq Nawaz Khan, S. P. , Gurdaspur, as the Police wished to fly over the disturbed area to have a bird’s eye view of the country-side) or to find out the fate of Ahmadi villages that were reported to be attacked by Sikh Jathas. One of these Ahmadi villages was Winjwan (Police Station, Batala) which was attacked, looted and destroyed on August 20/21 and no less than 50 of its inhabitants were killed and about 39 wounded. Another Ahmadi village was Faizullah Chak (Police Station Dhariwal) which was attacked and destroyed on August 22/23 and very heavy casualties were inflicted on its people including the abduction of a large number of women. In spite of this even the innocent use of our aeroplanes was banned and we were deprived of the last cord that connected us with the outside world. The reason for this banning order was alleged to be that one of these aeroplanes shot at certain Sikhs from the air or, as another version of this allegation goes, it landed in the fields and shot at some of the Sikhs gathered there. Now, any experienced officer of the India Air Force can easily see that both these things are physically impossible, for, considering the speed of the aircraft, no sane man can think of effectively using his gun from the air or of landing in a crowd of hostile Sikhs and then taking off at will. Besides, we