Unravelling Chittagong arms haul mystery

For six long years the seizure of a ten-truck load of arms in Chittagong in April 2004 remained a mystery. Not any longer.  It is now established conclusively that these arms were procured for India’s north east based insurgent group United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) from North Industries Corporation (NORINCO), an Ordnance Factory located near Beijing.

NORINCO is the largest state owned ordnance factory in China

The procurement - 27,020 grenades, 840 rocket launchers, 300 accessories of rocket launchers, 2,000 grenade launching tubes, 6,392 magazines and 11,40,520 bullets, -.was carried out under supervision of senior officers of Bangladesh premier intelligence agencies National Security Intelligence (NSI) and Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Bangladesh’s Bengali daily, Prothom Alo reported. Two officials of the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka were also active players in the ‘import’.

The daily contacted the Chinese embassy in Dhaka for some clarifications on the deal but the query met with a deafening silence. “No response was forthcoming from the Chinese mission”, Prothom Alo reported in a signed despatch on Sept 26.

The Court in Chittagong dealing with the sensational arms haul case has extended the time frame for completing the investigation. This is the tenth extension sought and obtained by the police. Public Prosecutor Kamal Uddin argued that police needed more time to prepare the charge sheet and to complete a few more inquiries. 

On Sept 26, Metropolitan Sessions Judge Inamul Haque Bhuiyan allowed the plea and directed the investigating officer (IO) Maniruzzaman Chowdhury to wrap up his probe in 60-days. A senior assistant superintendent with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Chowdhury, took over the probe on January 18, 2009 on the directions of the court.

ULFA figured as the beneficiary of the arms right from day one. The arms haul, in fact, was an accident. Some arms fell while being loaded into trucks at the Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Company’s jetty on the night of All Fools Day in 2004 (April 1) and commotion broke out. Rest,   as the saying goes, was history. The government of the day in Dhaka and the government agencies  were not too keen on the probe. The result was delays in what essentially was an open and shut case.

Following a court order on February 12 2008, the CID appointed senior police officer Ismail Hossain as the investigation officer. He sought and obtained two extensions but he failed to make much headway. Moniruzzaman, who succeeded him, made a quick impact.   He arrested a number of high-profile suspects, including two former directors general of the National Security Intelligence (NSI) and a couple of naval officers. Most of them have confessed to their involvement in the arms ring.

The investigations revealed the involvement of several Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders and former ministers as well as key functionaries of the erstwhile BNP- led Four Party Alliance (FPA) Government in aiding and abetting ULFA and in facilitating the Chinese arms supply to the Indian insurgent group.

The breakthrough in probe came with the arrest of Akbar Hussein Khan, a field officer with the NSI. It was he who had hired the ten trucks to ferry the Chinese arms from the Chittagong port to Maulavi Bazar. His confession led to the arrest of Wg Cdr (Retd) Sahab Uddin, Director of NSI, and he in turn led the trail to former Director Generals of NSI, Maj Gen (Retd) Rezzaqul Haider Chowdhury and Brig Gen (Retd) Abdur Rahim. Both were arrested.

Sahabuddin admitted during interrogation (May 9-14, 2009) revealed the involvement of Pakistan High Commission officials. He identified them as Shahid Mahmood, a Counselor and Brig Gen Moghis Uddin, Defense Attaché.  According to him, four top functionaries were hand in glove with Pak officials in the entire smuggling mission.

‘Brig Gen (Retd) Abdur Rahim, Brig Gen A. S Shaukat, Brig Gen Wasim, Sqn Ldr Didar and Maj Liaqat had held series of talks with Uddin on planning and execution of arms delivery to ULFA through the river route till Anwara (in Chittagong) and later to Haluaghat (in Mymensingh) bordering India’., the former NSI director told his interrogators.

Ekramul Haque, who broke the story in Prothom Alo, writes that the ULFA’s self-styled Commander-in-Chief Paresh Barua was in the loop at every stage  of planning and execution of the arms supply chain. He participated in the meetings senior NSI officers and Pak diplomats held with the functionaries of the BNP-led government in the run up to the arms procurement and their delivery.   The strategy sessions were held in Dhaka and Chittagong.

A key government functionary at these strategy sessions was the then State Minister for Home Lutfuzzaman Babar.  Home Secretary of the day, Omar Faruque, was in the picture right from day one, according to the investigators. Interestingly, when the arms haul case broke out, Khaleda Zia government set up a committee led by Faruque with the mandate to come to grips with the issue. And he did the hatchet job expected of him. He made all out efforts to shield the real faces and divert the course of investigations. Brig Gen. Rezzaqul Hyder Chowdhury, who is now cooling his heels in the jail, is one of the committee members. Others were Brig Gen Enamur Rahman Chowdhury, a   former DG, NSI, Shamsul Islam, DIG, Special Branch (SB), and Faruque Ahmad, DIG, CID.

What strengthened the police case, and, in fact, gave respectability was the deposition by Hafizur Rahman, a smuggler. He was literally on a song when he appeared before the Court on March 2, 2009. The Daily Star describes him as the prime accused. His confession before Metropolitan Magistrate Md Mahabubur Rahman was recorded in 43 –pages. He revealed the involvement of senior NSI and DGFI officials in the arms smuggling. There afterwards, police arrested Maj Gen Rezzaqul Hyder Chowdhury, Brig Gen (Retd) Abdur Rahim, Wg Cdr Shahabuddin, Maj Liaqat Hossen, former Managing Director of Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Company Limited (CUFL) Mohsin Talukder, General Manager of CUFL Enamul Haque and several other senior serving and retired NSI and DGFI functionaries.

Barring Maj Gen Rezzaqul Hyder Chowdhury and Maj Liaqat Hossen, all others have admitted their involvement in the sensational Chittagong arms smuggling case, Prothom Alo reported quoting CID sources.

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