Dhaka: Top ULFA leader Paresh Barua, one of India’s most wanted militants, two former ministers and as many army generals were among 14 people sentenced to death by a Bangladeshi court on Thursday for the country’s biggest weapons haul, nearly 10 years after the seizure.
Barua, currently a fugitive whose whereabouts are unknown, was given the death sentence in absentia in the sensational case of the seizure of 10 trucks containing 4,000 weapons and over 11 million bullets in April 2004.
Jamaat-e-Islami chief and former minister Matiur Rahman Nizami and ex-junior minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar in the then Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led government were also sentenced to death by the court in Chittagong.
“The Metropolitan Sp-ecial Tribunal-1 has handed down death penalty to 14,” Samoy TV said soon after Judge SM Mojibur Rahman delivered the verdict in a crowded courtroom amid tight security in the southeastern port city.
Barua, who headed the banned United Libe-ration Front of Asom’s (ULFA) military wing, now leads a faction of the group opposed to talks with the Indian government.
Extra police and elite Rapid Action Bat-talion officers were depl-oyed in key areas as a precaution, amid concerns activists could take to the streets to protest the decision.
