Staff Correspondent
Authorities at the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) headquarters began to count up their arms and ammunition yesterday, 17 days into the bloodbath, to figure out exactly how many of them are still missing.
Director General (DG) of BDR Brigadier General Moinul Hossain told The Daily Star, “Until the calculation is done we can not possibly say how many arms and ammunition are missing and how many were used during the revolt.”
Asked about the delay in estimation the DG said, “It took time to gather them up from different places where they were abandoned by mutineers.”
“All recovered arms and ammunition will come in handy as evidences during investigation,” the DG said adding that investigators, law enforcement agencies, army, BDR, navy — all are involved in the count up.
Most of the mutineers abandoned their arms while fleeing BDR headquarters during the mutiny and after it was over while others are suspected to have taken to their heels along with firearms and ammunition, said sources.
Members of law enforcement agencies later picked them up from different nook and corners of Pilkhana and these were deposited haphazardly causing serious disorder in keeping proper account.
Besides, Bangladesh Navy and Fire Brigade members recovered a good number of those arms from places around Pilkhana and its nearby ponds.
An army major engaged in the process of counting arms and ammunition said, “Now we are counting out and putting serial number on them to expedite the process.”
Moinul told The Daily Star, “We have started it today and when we are done it would be made public.”
Meanwhile, BDR authorities have already started disbursement of monthly salaries of BDR personnel at the headquarters, said the DG.
The DG also informed that BDR members outside Dhaka had already received their monthly salaries several days ago.
Explaining the reason of deferred payment he added, “The payment was delayed due to the procedure of appointing new commanders in places of those who were killed during the mutiny.”
Meanwhile, yesterday 14 BDR members were allowed to meet their kith and kin. A total of 82 BDR personnel have had the opportunity to meet their near and dear ones so far.
Apart from this, the authorities provided three mobile phones to each barrack for BDR jawans to talk to their relatives for two to three minutes each day.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
