Babara massacre
Babara ground is located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The Babrra massacre or (Babara massacre) was a mass shooting in which about 600 unarmed Pashtuns, who were supporters of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, were killed and more were injured on Babrra ground in the Hashtnagar region in Charsadda District, North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Pakistan. The massacre took place on 12 August 1948, on the order of the Chief Minister of the North-West Frontier Province, Abdul Qayyum Khan Kashmiri.
In mid-September 1948, the central government of Pakistan banned the Khudai Khidmatgar movement and many of its supporters were arrested. The provincial government destroyed the center of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement at Sardaryab, Charsadda District.
In September 1948, Abdul Qayyum Khan Kashmiri, during his speech at the Provincial Assembly, said: “I had imposed Section 144 at Babrra. When the people did not disperse, the shots were fired at them. They were lucky that the police’s ammunition ran out; otherwise, not a single soul would have survived.” Then referring to four members of the opposition in the provincial assembly who were members of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, he continued: “If they were killed, the government would not have cared.
In July 1950, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, President of the Awami League, said at a large gathering in Dhaka, East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh): “The barbarous massacre of the Red Shirts (Khudai Khidmatgars) committed at Charsadda in 1948 surpassed the Jallianwala Bagh massacre committed by the British in 1919.
The massacre is commemorated every year by the Pashtun community on 12 August
