In the name of legal arms trade, certain businessmen are handing over weapons to terrorists. It’s believed that businessmen, authorized to sell legal weapons, are titling towards unlawful selling of weapons for huge profit.
Reportedly, extremists based on the southern part of Bangladesh, bandits who operate within the deep forest of the Sunderbans, plus city terrorists are buying these illegal guns.
Dhaka based Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit, has already identified certain businessmen who are flouting laws on gun selling.
CTTC head, Monirul Islam, says: “we are carrying out surveillance and arrests based on reliable information; those arrested are leading us to other people involved in illegal selling of guns.”
In selling the firearms, business organisations are not maintaining a register, he said.
Each piece of weapon is being sold at double the price, added the worried law enforcer.
The law came to know about the illegal trade behind a legal banner last April following the arrest of Anwar Hossain, Babu, owner of Rangpur based Sarkar Arms Company, who had come to Gabtoli in Dhaka to illegally sell two weapons.
From information given by Babu, police arrested Dr. Zahidul Alam and his wife, Masuma Akhter, with two weapons and bullets.
Later, acting on information gleaned from Zahidul, police recovered 12 unlicensed weapons with 1610 bullets from his home in Mymensingh.
Under questioning, Zahidul and his wife identified Mymensingh based arms dealer, AKM Shabuddin as the main source of the weapons.
Based on information provided by Shahabuddin, another person called Babul was arrested from Mahakhali with two illegal weapons and 125 rounds of bullets.
Later, Babul revealed during investigation that he had collected the weapons from Chittagong based Bangladesh Arms Company and Rajshahi based K Ahmed arms company.
It’s believed that illegal weapons from these two companies eventually end up with forest and river pirates.
A case has been filed against three companies: Bangladesh Arms Company from Chittagong, K Ahmed in Rajshahi and Albert Arms in Khulna.
CTTC officers say: “the recovered weapons were imported legally but the person carrying the weapon took a permission from the zilla magistrate and sold them to a legal arms dealer. The dealer did not register the weapon (s) in his stock register.
It’s believed that the guns which are not registered go around different hands, finally ending up with terrorists.
In this case, the price doubles when they are sold.
An officer of CTTC’s illegal arms enforcement division, says: “there are 60-65 legal arms traders in the country with 20-22 in Dhaka.”
Those who operate outside the capital, take advantage of lax monitoring by the district administration and carry out an illegal trade, behind a legal one.
Referring to arrested Babul, the officer said that in his legal business place, Babul had only one long barrel gun.
“He used to keep illegally procured guns in his home and disregarded the rule of monthly report to the magistrate, handing in only one in a year.
The official highlighted the need for digital preservation of all weapons related information, underlining that the current system, in which records are kept manually, a lot of important facts, along with information about the actual number of owners of a weapon are lost.