DHAKA: Bangladesh High Court has reduced the life sentence of ULFA leader Paresh Baruah to 14 years imprisonment in connection with an attempt to smuggle truckloads of weapons to the hideouts of the separatist group in Assam two decades ago.
Last month, the court had commuted Baruah’s death sentence to life imprisonment.
Baruah, the United Liberation Front of Asom’s military commander who is believed to be living in China, was sentenced to death after a trial in absentia in 2014. His name also figures in the ‘most wanted’ list of India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA).
“The two-judge bench commuted the life imprisonment of Baruah and four Bangladeshis,” an official of the attorney general’s bureau said on Wednesday.
The High Court on Tuesday acquitted former Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) state minister for home affairs Lutfuzzaman Babar and five others, who were sentenced to life imprisonment in the same case.
The court also commuted the prison sentences of five more convicts, including Baruah. The bench also declared abetted (ended) the appeals of other three accused as they died.
Truckloads of weapons were seized in April 2004 that were being transported to ULFA hideouts in northeastern India through Chattogram, which was then spelled as ‘Chittagong’.
The seized weapons included over 27,000 grenades, 150 rocket launchers, over 11 lakh ammunition, 1,100 sub machine guns and 11.41 million bullets.
One case was filed under the Special Powers Act 1974 for smuggling of firearms and the other under the Arms Act for illegal possession of arms.
Former junior minister Lutfuzzaman Babar, ex-forces intelligence (DGFI) chief major general Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury, ex-managing director of a state-run fertilizer plant Mohsin Talukder, its general manager Enamul Hoque, former additional secretary of industries ministry Nurul Amin and Jamaat-e-Islami leader Motiur Rahman Nizami were handed down death penalty in the cases.
Baruah and four others were handed down life imprisonment in both the cases.
In the latest verdict, the bench said the prosecution could not prove the charges brought against all accused regarding actual control and possession of the firearms mentioned in the case.
“The conviction and sentence in criminal cases cannot be handed out without credible evidence,” a defence counsel quoted the court observation as saying.
Motiur Rahman Nizami, former Ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami Nizami, who was the industries minister of the then prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance government too was handed down death sentence in the case.
However, in May 2016, he was executed in another case on crimes against humanity committed during the Liberation War in 1971.