India to focus on arms seizure

The bi-annual meeting between BSF Director General Ajai Raj Sharma and his BDR counterpart Maj. Gen. Mohammed Jahangir Alam Choudhary later ...

The bi-annual meeting between BSF Director General Ajai Raj Sharma and his BDR counterpart Maj. Gen. Mohammed Jahangir Alam Choudhary later this month in Bangladesh is expected to be a stormy affair in the backdrop of the huge arms seizure at Chittagong.

Sharma, who travels to Dhaka on April 28, will take up the issue of arms trafficking and its links with insurgent groups operating in the North-East. The April 2 seizure at the jetty of the Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Ltd. includes 1,290 7.62mm sub-machine gun, 400 9mm automatic carbine, 100 tommy automatic rifles, 150 40mm automatic T-69 rocket launchers, 5,192 magazines of SMG, 400 magazines for the tommy rifles, 400,000 pistol bullets and 25,020 hand grenades. The haul is estimated at about Rs 300 crore. The quantity of the seizure has rung alarm bells here with intelligence reports indicating that the consignment was headed for N-E insurgents. New Delhi even took up the matter with Dhaka through its High Commissioner Veena Sikri.

According to sources, the concerns over Bangladesh emerging as a transit point for arms supplies to insurgent groups in the North-East like ULFA and All Tripura Tigers Force gained currency with this seizure.

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The meeting between the BSF and BDR DGs is technically the first of the bi-annual meetings. The one held in January, sources said, had been carried over from the previous year. While it was suggested that when Foreign Secretary Shashank visited Dhaka a meeting at the level of Home Secretaries be held to discuss the issue of North-East insurgent groups using Bangladesh as base, sources said, the plans ran aground after Bangladesh Home Minister made a statement that Paresh Barua was not in his country and that law would take its own course in the case of Anup Chetia.

It’s learnt that the cache of arms seized at Chittagong port had arrived from Malaysia and was headed for insurgent groups in the North-East through the Cox Bazaar and Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). This is not the first time the CHT has come under the spotlight for gun running.

Nearly a dozen arms seizures have been made in this area over the past year. The BDR has made several hauls of sophisticated arms and ammunition like anti-aircraft machine guns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, AK-47s, M-79 and M-16 rifles from the three CHT districts of Bandarban, Khagrachhari and Rangamati last year. Reports suggest that over 35 arm syndicates are presently active in CHT.