{"book":"adl0973","page":75,"text":"victims, for they created suspicion and fear\nin the mind of this illiterate tyrant. Dis-\ntinction of any kind called for punishment.\nWithout a witness, without even a show of\ntrial or an opportunity to defend, a large\nnumber of people fell victim to the insatiable\nwrath of this blood-thirsty monarch and\nhis cruel followers. Suspicion was considered\ntantamount to proof and a trial invariably\nled to conviction. No one could dare to\nargue and no time was allowed for such\npurposes.\nAs the days passed and reports of victory\npoured in from everywhere, the Bacha feel-\ning firm and secure ruled with increasing\ncruelty and tyranny. After those orgies of\nbloodshed, he became quite indifferent to\nmurder and totally incapable of pity or\nremorse. Confiscation of property, exile or\nsimple death were deemed uncommon\ninstances of his leniency. Most of the unfor-\ntunate victims were either blown up from the\ncannon's mouth or shot down; others were\neither beaten, bastinadoed, impaled, bayonet-\nted or starved to death. Sprinkling of boiling\noil over the body or putting the victims into\nlarge iron cages or cutting off their hands\n\n46","chars":1131,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0973/00075.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":315,"title":"Progressive Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0973/75","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0973/canvas/75","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0973/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0973_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}