Dhaka, 20 September (H.S.): Bangladesh’s Special Response Battalion (SRB) has been unable to recover all the weapons looted from police stations during the 2024 student-led uprising.

Thousands of weapons were looted from police stations during the student-people’s uprising in 2024. As many as 1,306 weapons remain unaccounted for. Some of the looted weapons were subsequently used by criminals, including in attacks on law-enforcement agencies. This has raised concerns that the remaining weapons could be used to exert influence during the upcoming local elections. The SRB was assigned responsibility for recovering the weapons on September 9.

According to a report by the Dhaka Tribune, the SRB is seeking assistance from the public. It has offered rewards to those providing information and assured informants that their identities would be kept confidential. According to police headquarters, 5,763 weapons were looted from different police stations on August 5, 2024. Of these, 4,457 weapons had been recovered by September 14, while 1,306 remain missing. During the same period, 652,008 rounds of ammunition were also looted. Of these, 394,895 rounds have been recovered, while 257,113 rounds remain unaccounted for.

Sources said that most of the weapons and ammunition were looted by members of teenage gangs and political activists. Some of the weapons were later sold to criminal groups at low prices. These weapons are now reportedly being used in crimes including murder, extortion, snatching, robbery, drug trafficking and land grabbing. Some of the weapons have also reached robbers, kidnappers, teenage gangs, pirates and groups involved in looting in forested areas.

Police recently confirmed that the pistol used to fire at law-enforcement personnel during an operation to arrest Chattogram criminal Mubarak Hossain, alias “Galakata Mubarak,”on August 26 had been looted from Chattogram’s Kotwali Police Station on August 5, 2024. According to police, Mubarak told the investigating officer that he had obtained the weapon from another criminal, indicating that the firearm had passed through several hands after being looted.

In another case, a foreign-made pistol recovered in Mirpur was found to have been looted from a police station after August 5. On March 2, a Narcotics Control Department inspector was shot during an operation in the Sayedabad bus terminal area. Police arrested suspected criminal and drug dealer “Auto Sajol” in connection with the incident. Based on information obtained from him, police recovered two foreign-made pistols, four magazines, 77 rounds of ammunition and 59 grams of heroin from a rented house in Swamibagh. Sajol reportedly told police that the weapons had been looted from Wari Police Station in August.

Last Saturday, police recovered a pistol, two magazines and 20 rounds of ammunition from a shelf on the second floor of the Central Jama Masjid in Araihazar Bazar. Police said the items had been looted from Araihazar Police Station during the 2024 uprising. Police investigations have also uncovered evidence that looted weapons were being sold. Some individuals reportedly sold looted pistols for as little as Tk 50,000.

SRB senior officer Wing Commander AZM Entekhab Chowdhury appealed to members of the public to provide information if they knew of locations where looted or illegal weapons were being kept. He said special operations had been launched to recover the weapons.

He said, “We have received some preliminary information about illegal weapons in several areas, including Khulna, Rajshahi and Chattogram.”

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar