Sadah Massacre
From Interlink Encyclopedia
Event occurred in the then Mandate of Asir on the early evening of January 22nd of 1935. While is accepted that indeed the Indian troops were shot by what it seems one or two rabble rousers inside the mainly peaceful demonstration in support of independence and a Yemeni connection was indeed made during the investigation of the event the response of the Indian troops facing the march was extremely violent, after ten minutes fifty civilians were dead and close to two hundred wounded. The heavy casualties were explained in the later investigations of the event that they were caused by the extremely packed mass of people fleeing the shooting, the crowded streets and the use of two rounds of canister launched by the Sher tank present.
The commander on site, Lt. Colonel K. K. Chandrasekar, was court-martialed by the actions of this day and later hanged. Other officers and men present were acquitted of any wrongdoing due to being considered that they only obeyed the orders given to them. The event galvanized the Asir population in regard to the option of joining India, one that was soundly defeated in the January 28th of 1935 plebiscite.
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January 22nd 1935 Amit Yadit silently gave a prayer for the mass of death and wounded in front of his position, feeling sorry for the still moaning wounded asking for help. The machine gun section under his command (1) started to open fire on the crowd when the tank present, were the officer in charge was directing the operation, opened fire on the crowd with a canister round after one soldier was hit by a pistol shot coming from the march.
He knew one his machine gun shot over the crowd on purpose but all of his men obeyed the orders given to them as the good Indian soldiers they were. He could see the Red Crescent personnel arriving to the scene now, all of them surveying the scene with dismay on their face. They will not look at us the same ever again. We gave then ten years of progress but they will remember this even longer , lamented Amit while telling his troops to stand down.
(1) Three Bhandara 1911 machine guns (water cooled Maxims)
OOC: India is no saint and sometimes errors happen.
This post has been edited 3 times, last edit by "perdedor99" (May 2nd 2008, 4:36pm)