The Qadian Diary — Page 31
Eyewitness Testimonies 31 Sometime in the afternoon, a car passed in front of us before turning back and stopping some 50 yards away from where we were seated. Four soldiers and a Sikh officer emerged from the vehicle. With their guns loaded they made a circle around us and ordered us to raise our hands. We were separated and searched, but no weapons or ammunition were found on our person. On the far edge of the road there was a dwelling belonging to some Sikhs. They kept a watch over what was happening. We could see that they were armed with scythes and other weapons. However, at no point did they move to attack us. During the search, the soldiers accused us of being agitators. They alleged that we had set off a fire in a nearby village and killed a man on the side of the road. We denied these charges. They then asked us about the motorcycle and we told them it had broken down, and were it not for this, we would have already returned to Qadian. They took a look at the bike and after a great deal of tinkering around were able to get it running again. One of the soldiers joined Ahmad Ali on the motorcycle, and the rest of us took the car to the district lock up of Batala, where we were put in a holding cell. At around midnight we heard a commotion and saw the soldiers who were detaining us load their guns and run off into the distance. They said that Muslims were attacking the prison. Later we found out that these supposed ambushers were just a ramshackle group of Muslim refugees who were passing by close to where we were. This did not stop the soldiers from greeting them with a hail of bullets. When morning came we were handcuffed and loaded onto an army truck along with two Muslims from Batala and taken to Gurdaspur jail. When we reached there, we were surprised to see Chaudhry Sharif Ahmad Bajwa. He asked us whether we had