Stage-managed arms recovery in North Khabangpujjya, Khagrachari

chtnews.com
News No. 125/2008, July 09, 2008

Joint forces of army and police have staged a drama of recovery of firearms in North Khabangpujjya of Khagrachari town.

Residents of North Khabangpujjya said on 8 July, at about 10pm police and army personnel in four pick-up vans came to the area. After pulling up their vans near the house of Pradip Kumar Chakma, 47 on Swanirbhor - Khabangpujjya road, 11 army soldiers got off the vehicles and walked to an open space near his house.

They stayed there for about five minutes and then came back to where the vehicles were standing. Afterwards, the soldiers picked up Pradip Kumar Chakma, a farmer and Uttom Chakma, a private tutor, from their houses.

The soldiers showed them one cartridge, one pistol, three cartridge barrels and 149 rounds of cartridge bullets, and claimed that these had been recovered from the open space near Pradip Kumar Chakma's house.

The soldiers forced them to put their sign on a blank sheet of paper and then drove away.

Pradip Chakma's wife told chtnews.com that the claim that the army had recovered arms and ammunition from their area is a sham. "This is a complete lie and nobody will buy their (army) story. Every day till late in the evening the children play games in that open space where the army claims to have recovered the arms."

Ujjal Smriti Chakma, a central committee leader of the UPDF, termed the alleged recovery of firearms as "stage-managed and a conspiracy to find false pretexts to arrest UPDF members"