Bangladesh court commutes ULFA chief Paresh Baruah’s death sentence to life imprisonment

way2barak, December 19: A High Court bench of the Bangladesh Supreme Court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence of ULFA chief Paresh Barua to life imprisonment in connection with a 2004 weapons smuggling case.

The bench comprising Justices Mustafa Zaman Islam and Nasreen Akter also acquitted former minister Lutfozzaman Babar and five others.

The case pertains to the seizure of 4,930 firearms, 27,020 grenades, 840 rocket launchers, 300 rockets, 2,000 grenade launching tubes, 6,392 magazines and over 1.14 million bullets by the Bangladesh police on April 1, 2004.

The weapons were seized as they were being loaded onto trucks from two boats at a jetty in Chittagong. Investigation showed that they were manufactured in China and were being shipped to the ULFA.

In January 2014, a special court in Chittagong sentenced Baruah and 13 others to death.

The United Liberation Front of Asom was banned in India in 1990 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Since 1979, the group has sought to create a sovereign nation of Assam for the indigenous Assamese people through an armed struggle.

Baruah is on the National Investigation Agency’s most wanted list.

Matiur Rahman Nizami, former Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh chief and an accused in the case, was executed in 2016 for his alleged role in atrocities during the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971.