Wall Street Journal

BOYRA, INDIA - Babar Ali Khan, a bearded, barefoot farmer who doesn't know how old he is, has just fled from East Pakistan into this Indian border village. He came leading a rickety little pony cart. in it lies his sister with an untreated bullet wound in her leg.

Babar Ali Khan has been traveling for five days, ever since West Pakistani Army troops arrived at his village of Haibadpur last week. At that time the farmer s family had 10 members, and they all took refuge in a hole by the river. The soldiers ordered all the villagers to come out of their hiding places. The Khan family obeyed orders. A machine gun immediately mowed down seven of the 10. Only Babar All Khan, his wife and wounded sister escaped.

The people who came out of their holes were shot. The people who did not come out were also shot, Mr. Khan says simply.confused, bitter, impoverished sad pi U able, Mr. Khan is typical of the Bengali refugees flowing across the Indian border from rebellion-torn East Pakistan. They are fleeing in the wake of the West Pakistani Army's crushing blows to Bangla Desh (Bengal Nation) in East Pakistan. Each arrives with his own tale of West Pakistani Army brutality, his own story of suffering and his own fears about the future.

INDIA'S FUTURE ROLE

The swelling number of refugees poses yet another threat to stability and peace in the area. Nobody really knows how many refugees there are, but estimates range as high AS one million. Moreover, a combination of harsh West Pakistani military occupation, economic chaos and future famine in East Pakistan will drive five million to 10 million more Bengali refugees into India during the next 18 months, one Indian general predicts. Some observers think this estimate may be far too high, but the fact that some senior Indian generals believe India will have this many refugees on its hands Increases India s sense of Involvement In the Pakistani crisis. This, in turn, is further encouragement to Indian intervention in East Pakistan.

It is increasingly likely that India will help to organize, train and arm Bangla Desh guerrilla units and provide them with border sanctuaries from which to operate, sources say. One Indian general estimates it will take about a year to get an effective guerrilla war under way with Indian support. Indian military men fear that if they don't take the initiative, the Bangla Desh movement will succumb to Bengali Communist control, perhaps with furtive Communist Chinese support. (At this point though, the Chinese are backing the West Pakistanis. ) Some analysts think the refugee pool will provide the manpower for a protracted guerrilla war against the West Pakistani occupation forces. Many refugees say they would like to fight for Bangla Desh but frequently concede they don t know how. At present, anyway, the refugees clearly lack the leadership, organization, training and weapons that a guerrilla war would require.

THE TRAGIC STORIES

The refugees feel they have ample reason to bear fighting grudges against the West Pakistanis. Take Minu Bibi, a pretty young woman of 26 with a large brass ring in her left ear. She came to India alone. The Pakistani Army arrived in her town and shouted, All Bengalis out. Most of her family followed the order, and her parents and brother were shot. Her sister was raped and then shot. Minu ran into the woods and watched all this. Then she walked for 16 days before reaching the Indian border. A gaunt middle-aged man blurts out another story: My whole family killed. . . . We were asleep In the room.... My family . . . My brother, my brother was a student.... He, too, was killed. The man breaks down.

Several generations of a poor Bengali family may sacrifice everything to permit one male family member to achieve the status of student. All of the family s dreams of higher social status, as well as its hopes of future financial support, are pinned to that young man.

Most refugees are desperately poor. Dalal Khan, 53, tells a typical tale. The soldiers came into his town, kicked open his door and shot his son-in-law, who was asleep. Dalal Khan escaped with his wife and daughter through the back door. He had to leave without even a full set of clothes. He now wears a large rag wrapped around his midsection and a smaller rag draped over his head. He must also eat off a rag. I have no dish, he explains.

So far, no international relief supplies are reaching the refugees. The only assistance‹ primitive tent shelters, rice and some baste medical supplies is coming from official and private Indian sources.

Nobody knows what future these refugees face. Some observers believe that when the immediate chaos In East Pakistan subsides and the West Pakistani Army cools off, many refugees - particularly villagers-will trickle back across the border. In this view, ties to land will prove more powerful than fear or hate.

Other observers believe the refugees are far too bitter and too scared ever to return to an army occupied East Pakistan. Moreover, the West Pakistani authorities may not let them back. These authorities may decide that vastly overpopulated East Pakistan can do well without the uprooted peasant refugees, The refugees would thus languish here in India, to be gradually absorbed into the masses of poverty-plagued India.

West Pakistan may also consider the more educated refugees as dangerous subversives. Indeed, there have been many stories of Pakistani soldier systematically wiping out educated middle-class Bengalis, the class that led the Bangla Desh movement. One 33 year old court clerk says that the Army called all the civil servants in his town together to get their pay. They were called together and then shot, he says. If the middle-class moderates are killed off or refused re-entry into Pakistan, leftist mutants may end up any future stages of the East Pakistan struggle, some observers think.

At the moment, the refugees themselves have differing plans. A 20-year-old farmer whose mother and grandmother were shot by the Army is afraid to return. He says he will stay in India until I see the Bangla Desh flag flying across the border. But Bonoy Kumar Mondol, a young schoolteacher whose father was killed by the Army, says he will go back and fight if he is given a gun and taught how to shoot it. I want Bangle Desh. Let the war continue until independence he exclaims. But many can think only of present grief Shrouded in rags, waning and sobbing, four wizened old women crawl out of a crowd of refugees and clutch the feet of two reporters. Their story is a simple one. Their children are dead.