A Bangladesh court has issued an arrest warrant against one of India's most important fugitives, Paresh Barua, the military chief of the separatist United Liberation Front of Asom.
Chittagong Metropolitan Special Tribunal on Tuesday took cognisance of the supplementary charge sheet against 11 new accused, in cases connected with the 10-truck arms haul in Chittagong on April 2, 2004.
The arms were smuggled allegedly in collaboration with some government higher-ups, for the ULFA outfit.
The court asked the law enforcers to produce the two absconding, including Barua, before the court.
The new accused include the former Minister for Home, Lutfozzaman Babar, and Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami, who was the Minister for Industry during the BNP-Jamaat coalition government under Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.
Motiur Rahman Nizami is also facing charges of war crimes as collaborator of the Pakistan Army in the country's liberation war in 1971.
The investigators claimed that the arms, produced at the Chinese factory Norinco, were to be transported to India for the Assamese separatist group. Police seized the arms trucks from a government-owned factory's jetty.
The former director general of National Security Intelligence (NSI) Brig. Gen. (retired) Abdur Rahim, the former director of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) Maj. Gen. (retired) and Rezzaqul Haider Chowdhury, who was later appointed as the DG of NSI, are also on the charge sheet. The charge sheet claimed that Barua was present while the smuggled weapons were being unloaded.
