Md Joynal Abdin Khan :
A joint team of Police and Fire Service have recovered five more Chinese sub-machine guns (SMGs), on the second day of weapon search operation in the Shitolakhya River.
“We found the arms near the Kanchan Bridge on Saturday afternoon,” said Ismail Hossain, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Rupganj Police Station under Narayanganj district.
The second day search for weapons and ammunition started at about 9:30 pm of the day. It will continue until the proper authorities suspend, the police official said.
“We have defused some grenades on Friday night, while the rest are being neutralized” said the OC on Saturday. On Friday, they recovered large cache of sophisticated firearms and ammunition, including two rocket launchers, 62 Chinese SMGs, 42 hand grenades, 51 magazines, five pistols, 54 time-fused hand grenades, some boxes filled with bullets, explosives and two walkie-talkies, from under the water body.
Meanwhile, Police not yet clear about the motive and bearers of the recovered arms and weapons, Police sources said.
Although police did not disclose the name of the group who possessed those arms, they claimed to have found similarities with the arms and bags recovered from Diabari in the capital’s Uttara on June 18 last year.
According to them, these have similarity with arms and ammunition, reportedly used by the Indian separatist organisation Ulfa.
Shafiqul Islam, Deputy Inspector General (Dhaka Range) of Police and head of Rupganj arms recovery probe body, told the reporters on Saturday, “We are trying to find out the source of the arms. But we are not clear as to which country have manufactured these arms, as no trade mark was found on the surface of the weapons.”
The motive of the stock of arms will be clear if we could trace the country of origin of recovered arms, the police official said.
“However, the DIG said, Bangladesh and China only manufacture such arms. The recovered arms will be testified by the Army and the CID.”
Four persons have been arrested in this connection, said Shafiqul Islam. They are Sharif Khan, Shahin, Russel and Shanta.
“A 22-year boy named Hridoy found a sack of arms when he was fishing in the water body and informed Sharif Khan. He then recovered 10 arms with some cohorts. But Police recovered three arms only from Sharif. Efforts are on to recover the remaining seven arms,” the DIG said.
To a query, he replied, the arms are similar to the 10-truck recovered arms, not with the arms used by the militants in the country.
Monirul Islam, Chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit, said they were suspecting that the group behind Diabari arms was responsible for the Rupganj incident.
Asked whether any militant group was involved in the Rupganj incident, he said they had recovered arms from different militant hideouts, but those had no similarities with the recovered arms of Rupganj. They would also look into the matter, said Monirul Islam.
While searching near Kanchan bridge in the Purbachal Residential Area, police found a nylon rope tied to a tree along the canal and the other part of the rope was under in canal water. Dragging the rope, police got a travel bag tied to it and found some arms inside the bag, said the Chief of CTTC.
