A Bangladeshi court is all set to deliver a verdict today in the country's biggest ever weapons haul case linked to India's separatist United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), nearly 10 years after the seizure took place.
Security and law enforcement agencies enforced a tight vigil ahead of the verdict by Chittagong Metropolitan Sessions Judge and Special Tribunal judge SM Mojibur Rahman in the sensational 10-truck arms haul case.
Officials said political bigwigs and former intelligence officials who were tried for their alleged involvement in the haul were brought to the crowded courtroom from Chittagong central jail under heavy security escorts.
"We expect the verdict to be delivered in next one hour as the judge and the accused appeared in the court," a prosecution lawyer told reporters at the court complex housed on a hilltop.
Witnesses said elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), armed police and plainclothesmen virtually laid a security siege inside and around the court complex while the people were allowed inside only after security checks.
The verdict comes nearly a decade after the "accidental" seizure of 10-truck loads of weapons destined to the ULFA hideouts in north-eastern India through Bangladesh territory.
The tribunal earlier indicted 11 people and nine of them faced the trial in person.
On November 15, 2011, the tribunal indicted the suspects including former junior minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar in the then Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led four-party rightwing government and fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami chief Matiur Rahman Nizami.
The nine others included two former army generals - the then director general of the apex National Security Intelligence (NSI) ex-brigadier general Abdur Rahim and former director of Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) ex-major general Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury, who later also became the NSI chief.
The fugitive two suspects are ULFA leader Paresh Barua and a former additional secretary to the government Nurul Amin but they were tried in absentia while all the accused were tried under the Arms Act for illegal possession of firearms and the Special Powers Act, 1974 for weapon smuggling.
