India, March 31 -- Bangladesh Prime Minister (PM) Tarique Rahman's remarks on the 1971 war on March 26, the country's Independence Day from the erstwhile West Pakistan, have reignited a question that has never fully settled in Bangladesh's public consciousness: Why has Pakistan never properly apologised for the atrocities committed?

On the night of March 25, 1971 - remembered in Bangladesh as a black night - the Pakistani military launched Operation Searchlight, a coordinated crackdown targeting civilians, students, intellectuals and political activists. In the months that followed, the Pakistani military, along with local collaborators, is estimated to have killed nearly three million people, subjected almost half a million women to sys...