A special Bangladesh court has reportedly awarded death penalty to 14 people, including military commander of Indian separatist group, United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa), Paresh Barua, for allegedly smuggling in 10 truckloads of firearms in 2004.
The convicts also include Jamaat chief and then industries minister Motiur Rahman Nizami and then state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar and five intelligence officials.
According to a report in The Daily Star, the huge cache of arms and ammunition which included 4,930 sophisticated firearms of different types, 840 rocket launchers, 300 rockets, 27,020 grenades, 2,000 grenade-launching tubes, 6,392 magazines and 11.41 million bullets were recovered on April 2, 2004 at the jetty of Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Ltd (CUFL).
Barua and former additional secretary of industries ministry Nurul Amin, who have been separately awarded life imprisonment under the Arms Act, have been absconding since the arms cache recovery.
The convicts include former DGFI director Maj Gen (retd) Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury, former National Security Intelligence (NSI) director general Brig Gen (retd) Abdur Rahim and deputy director Maj (retd) Liakat Hossain, along with other NSI officials.
