Massacres After The Battle
Mass of surrendered Maratha soldiers were handcuffed and then murdered, their heads chopped off by Afghans. The Afghan cavalry and pikemen ran wild through the streets of Panipat, killing tens of thousands of Maratha soldiers and civilians. The women and children seeking refuge in streets of Panipat were hounded back in Afghan camps as slaves. Children over 14 were beheaded before their own mothers and sisters. Afghan officers who had lost their kin in battle were permitted to carry out massacres of 'infidel' Hindus the next day also, in Panipat and the surrounding area. They arranged victory mounds of severed heads outside their camps. According to the single best eye-witness chronicle- the bakhar by Shuja-ud-Daula's Diwan Kashi Raj, about 40,000 Maratha prisoners were slaughtered in cold blood the day after the battle. According to Mr. Hamilton of Bombay Gazette about half a million Marathi people were present there in Panipat town and he gives a figure of 70,000 prisoners as executed by Afghans. Many of the fleeing Maratha women jumped into the Panipat wells rather than risk rape and dishonour.
Abdali's soldiers took about 22,000 Hindu women and young children and brought them to their camps. The women were raped in the camp, many committed suicide because of constant rapes perpetrated on them. All of the prisoners were exchanged or sold as sex slaves in Afghanistan, transported on bullock carts, camels and elephants in bamboo cages.
Siyar-ut-Mutakhirin says :
| “ | The unhappy prisoners were paraded in long lines, given a little parched grain and a drink of water, and beheaded... and the women and children who survived were driven off as slaves - twenty-two thousand, many of them of the highest rank in the land. | ” |
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