DHAKA: Police on Friday seized a huge cache of arms and ammunition near the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka. The arms might have amassed to carry out act of sabotage, said inspector general of the police Shahidul Hoque after 62 machine guns, 40 magazines, two rocket launchers, five pistols, 42 grenades and a large number of bullets were found in an artificial lake at Purbachal. The scene is more than 20 kilometres north-east of Dhaka. Officer Mohammad Moniruzzaman said police conducted a raid in the area based on confession of a suspected drug peddler, who was earlier arrested with a machine gun.
Three people, arrested in connection with their suspected links with arms dealers, are being interrogated, said the officer. Police could not yet found any militant groups’ link with the weapons. “An investigation was launched to find the criminals. We also need to know whether the criminals have more such weapons in their possession,” Hoque said. Earlier on June 18, 2016 police found a similar cache of arms and ammunition in Dhaka’s Uttara neighbourhood. The case still remained mystery as the police could not make any headway in the investigation.
Days after the Uttara arms haul, a terrorist group carried out an attack on a restaurant in Dhaka’s Gulshan diplomatic area on July 1. The attack left 20 civilians, including foreign nationals, dead. Two policemen and six suspected Islamists were also killed as army commandos stormed the restaurant on the following morning to rescue a number of hostages, all Bangladeshi nationals. Muslim-majority Bangladesh has experienced a wave of attacks claimed by Islamist militant groups on secularist bloggers, writers, academics, rights activists, foreign nationals and people from minority faiths in the last three years.
