A countrywide army-police joint raid to recover illegal and stolen arms will commence from tomorrow. Members of BGB, Ansar, RAB and Coast Guard would also get engaged in different capacities.
The raid will kick-off following today's deadline for returning all firearms looted from police stations across the country. Earlier the Ministry of Home Affairs suspended firearm licenses issued to civilians during the past 15 years while instructing all to surrender their weapons.
However, it is disturbing to note that as of 31 August, police have been reported to have recovered a whopping 3,872 firearms and around 2.86 lakh bullets. Many of these recovered weapons and bullets had been either stolen or looted due to a spree of mob attacks and vandalism carried out at numerous police stations following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina government.
According to Police Headquarters, as many as 450 police stations came under direct attack during the July-August mass uprising. A huge number of arms and bullets were looted from the stations during the aforementioned period.
We fearfully assume, coupled with thousands of weapons issued to civilians in the last 15 years, total number of weapons and bullets would cross many thousands. Thus, need of the hour demands prompt recovery of all weapons, bullets, so to deter uncalled-for crimes and violence.
Despite army deployment to assist the civil administration, it is also important to engage our intelligence community at a broader scale in the joint drive operations.
As far as gun owners with valid licence are concerned, Special Branch of the police has reportedly stated that that their database has a specific list of 50,310 gun owners. Separating all gun licences granted during the AL regime may not be a difficult task, but recovering all weapons issued and permitted to use during that era, which by now is deemed illegal, will be a challenging task.
However, while we welcome the necessary arms recovery joint-drive, we expect all members of our police and defence establishments to strictly follow rules while showing their identities whenever and wherever required.
A forewarning in this regard, miscreants and criminal elements may well infiltrate in the arms recovery drive, hamper regular operations while sabotaging its key objective.
In conclusion, local and city communities have an important role to play by assisting the joint-drive by providing necessary information to civilian and police administrations. Mainstream and social media must get engaged in regular reporting while ensuring the joint-drive is not anyhow unlawfully executed, otherwise abused.
Most important for the interim government is to ensure, that the joint raid is conducted with maximum degree of accountability and transparency - and without violating law and human rights.
