On April 02, 2004 the largest ever arms haul in Bangladesh took place when police seized 10 truckloads of arms, including submachine-guns (1,290), Tommy Guns (100), semi-automatic rifles (400), rocket launchers (150), grenade launchers (2,000), rockets (840), hand grenades (25,020), magazines of SMG and others (6,392) and 18,40,000 bullets. In the most recent Bogra ammunition and explosive haul, police seized nearly 1,00,000 bullets and 200kg explosives. The Bogra ammo haul reports created confusion. On the first day of the cache seizure, the home minister told parliament that the Awami League was scheming to destabilise the government. The police headquarters in a statement echoed the home minister on July 4, 2003 in which it named an AL activist for possessing the huge stash of bullets. This time, too, the state minister for home described the haul as part of a 'big conspiracy' and did not rule out its possible links to the April 30 opposition deadline for the fall of the government.But newspapers reported: The arms cache was unloaded in the 'presence of police', Urea Factory effort leads to seizure of arms, gunrunners, workers hide unchallenged etc. Moreover, reports have it that a BNP lawmaker owns two of the eleven vessels that the intelligence agencies suspect as having carried the arms.
Though the signals are alarming, the political rhetoric shifted the focus of investigators nowhere and destroyed the cases one after another. Analysts believe that none of the arms hauls actually had anything to do with the internal politics of Bangladesh. There are indications that the real culprits have succeeded in remaining invisible because of the general lack of political will to uncover the truth, punish the real criminals and take effective measures to protect the nation from such a high risk bearing business.
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