DHAKA: Bangladesh HC on Tuesday reduced the life sentence of Ulfa leader Paresh Baruah to 14 years in jail and that of five others to 10-year prison term in a 2004 case of attempted smuggling of 10 truckloads of weapons to the separatist outfit in northeast India. Justices Mostafa Zaman Islam and Nasrin Akhter gave the verdict after hearing appeals filed by them for reducing their life sentences to jail terms.
On Dec 18 last year, HC had commuted the death sentences of Baruah and former army and intelligence officers Akbar Hossain, Liakat Hossain, Hafizur Rahman and Shahabuddin to life terms. The court had also acquitted former state minister for home affairs during the BNP-Jamaat tenure, Lutfozzaman Babar, in the case. On the same day, sentences of six other death row convicts were reduced to 10 years in prison.
The trucks were seized in April 2004 despite alleged efforts of certain “influential quarters” for its safe passage to Ulfa hideouts in northeast India through 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.
On Jan 30, 2014, Chattogram Metropolitan Special Tribunal-1 sentenced Baruah, Babar and others to death for smuggling of firearms. The Ulfa leader, believed to be living in China, was sentenced to death after a trial in absentia. His name also figures in the NIA’s ‘most wanted’ list.