BANGLADESH: With the country heading towards local government elections, the government has launched a special nationwide drive to recover looted and illegal firearms.
The Rapid Action Battalion will lead the operation, while the Police’s Special Branch and Anti-Terrorism Unit will gather and share intelligence. Other police units will join the drive as required.
The main target of the operation is recovering firearms and ammunition looted from police stations and government establishments during the July uprising, as well as illegally imported weapons.
“Several challenges are coming up, including local government elections. We have been instructed to recover these weapons by coordinating with several agencies, while RAB has been given the key responsibility,” Khandaker Rafiqul Islam, additional inspector general of Police Headquarters, told The Daily Star.
The drive comes 11 days after Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed ordered nationwide operations while speaking at Rajarbagh Police Lines on August 29. So far, however, the operation has yielded no breakthrough.
Talking to The Daily Star, RAB Director General Ahsan Habib Palash said they have already started working on the drive.
RAB held a coordination meeting at the home ministry on September 7 to finalise the plan, attended by representatives of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, ministry sources said.
Looted weapons have already surfaced in crimes.
Police on August 26 arrested Chattogram’s top criminal Mobarak Hossain, alias “Gola Kata Mobarak”, after he opened fire at police. The pistol he used was traced to Kotwali Police Station, from where it was looted on August 5, 2024.
Mobarak initially claimed he obtained the pistol from another criminal, but investigators suspect he was involved in looting the station’s arms, sources said.
Police also arrested two men in Chattogram with a revolver and bullets looted from Pahartali Police Station. Another suspect was detained with weapons looted from Double Mooring Police Station, which he allegedly used in muggings and robberies.
According to PHQ data, 460 police installations were attacked, torched or looted on August 5, 2024, the day the Awami League government fell.
A total of 5,942 firearms and 6.83 lakh rounds of ammunition were looted from police, RAB, prisons, Ansar and security forces, according to the home ministry database.
As of September 7, 4,515 firearms and 4.03 lakh rounds had been recovered, leaving 1,427 firearms and 2.79 lakh rounds missing, according to the ministry.
The missing weapons include 109 China-made rifles, 30 China-made SMGs, three LMGs, 203 pistols of 7.62x25mm calibre, 443 pistols of 9x19mm calibre, 384 12-bore shotguns, 128 gas guns and all 33 looted 9x19mm SMGs/SMTs, said PHQ sources.
The AL government issued around 17,200 firearm licences between 2009 and 2024. The interim government suspended the licences and ordered owners to surrender the weapons by September 3, 2024. While 13,340 were deposited, 3,860 were not and are now considered illegal.
PHQ officials said operations were also underway to recover those weapons.
According to minutes of the September 7 home ministry meeting obtained by The Daily Star, RAB DG Palash said the unrecovered weapons could be in the hands of underground criminals, teen gangs, narcotics dealers and border smugglers, posing a national security risk.
The ministry has revised rewards for information leading to recovery of weapons: up to Tk 2 lakh for heavy weapons, Tk 50,000 for pistols, revolvers or shotguns, and Tk 10,000-20,000 for other arms, including tear gas shells.
The government has assured protection for informants.
Towhidul Haque, associate professor at Dhaka University’s Institute of Social Welfare and Research, said, “These [firearms] are in the possession of criminals, not ordinary people. Criminals are using them for different types of crimes, including extortion and mugging. So, a coordinated drive is needed to recover the firearms.”
Maj Gen (Retd) Nayeem Ashfaque Chowdhury, vice chairman of Osmani Centre for Peace and Security Studies, said all the weapons could be recovered if there was political will and police were allowed to work professionally.
He said police intelligence, civil society and the media also needed to cooperate.
Prof Omar Faruk of criminology and police science at Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University said, “It would be unrealistic to expect that all the weapons can be recovered. But most of them can be retrieved if the authorities approach the issue above partisan considerations and treat criminals simply as criminals, regardless of their political affiliation.”
He warned that a politically selective drive could make recovery more difficult and lead to further proliferation of illegal firearms.- The Daily Star/ANN
