"Massacres took place": Locals reflect on the Partition of India

It is exactly 70 years since Britain left India. The country was split into two; Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Millions of Muslims moved to West and East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh. Hindus and Sikhs, travelling in the opposite direction, moved to be within India’s new borders.

Today marks Pakistan's independence day. There will be celebrations across the world but it will also be a time to remember and reflect.

More than a million people were killed in widespread riots. Here in the Midlands, many witnessed the violence and the mass migration.

Ram Singh Dhesi, from Leicester, remembers the chaos and bloodshed as a 10 year old boy living in India and has written a book in Punjabi about partition.

Kidar Nath Jain, from Birmingham, grew up in the Jhelum district of Pakistan.

He was left traumatised by the death of his father who was killed during the riots after partition.

Mr Nath said the violence was senseless and people who had previously been friends suddenly became enemies.

Dr Pippa Virdee, an historian from De Montfort University, says no-one, including the incoming Indian and Pakistani governments and the British, who were leaving the Indian sub-continent, anticipated the scale of violence and movement of people across the country.

Councillor Manjula Sood was just 18 months old and living in Delhi with her parents at the time.

Many of relatives were forced to leave their homes in Pakistan to make the arduous journey by train to India, a journey they thought they would never have to make.

Mrs Sood believes children should be taught about the horrors of partition.