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A Bangladeshi court is set to frame charges against 52 suspects, including United Liberation Front of Asom chief Paresh Barua and top Islamist leader Matiur Rahman Nizami in the country's biggest ever arms smuggling case when 10-truck loads of arms destined for banned Indian separatist group were seized.
"The court set the date on October 25 for framing the charges" as all of the 11 detained accused including ex-junior minister for home Lutfizzaman Babar, ex-industries minister and Jamaat-e-Islami leader Nizami and two former army generals appeared before the judge, a court official said. The rest 41 people accused in the case are absconding.
Officials familiar with the investigation said their extended probe found Chinese firm NORINCO to have produced the weapons but they could not identify the ship that carried the illegal consignment to Bangladeshi territory.
Chittagong Metropolitan Sessions judge SM Muzibur Rahman also rejected the bail petitions of three of the accused, former director general of National Security Intelligence
Rezaqul Haider Chowdhury, Major (retd) Liaqat Hossain and top leader of arms smuggling group Deen Mohammad, in the cases while the accused lawyers sought bail for them.
The development came two months after the CID submitted a supplementary charge sheet in the country's biggest ever 2004 arms haul accusing 11 fresh suspects including two former ministers of the past Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led four-party coalition government.
The supplementary charge-sheet said the weapons were brought for ULFA under the supervision of some officials of Directorate General of Forces Intelligence and National Security Intelligence.
Barua and another suspect who was an industries ministry official were on the run but the others were already in jail to face trial in person while the CID sought Interpol assistance to arrest Paresh Barua as he is believed to be hiding abroad.
The 10 truckloads of weapons was seized in April 2004 despite suspected efforts of certain "influential quarters" for its safe passage to ULFA hideouts in northeastern India through Chittagong, but the case was shelved for years after the apparently "accidental" seizure.
The seized weapons, which included over 27,000 grenades, 150 rocket launchers, over 11 lakh ammunition and 1,100 sub machine guns, were unloaded at a government jetty belonging to state-owned Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Company Ltd (CUFL) to be reloaded in trucks destined for northeastern frontiers.
The subsequent military-backed interim government in 2008 ordered the re-investigation amid allegations that there was a deliberate attempt on the part of the then administration under the BNP-led government to suppress facts to weaken the case.
"Very influential quarters of the then (BNP-led) government were involved in it who are to be brought to justice with caution," chief prosecution lawyer of the case Kamal Uddin told the court earlier as the investigations were underway.