Arms factory busted in Cox’s Bazar, 3 held

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) discovered an arms factory and held three workers of the factory from a remote hilly area in Pekua upazila of Cox’s Bazar on Wednesday.

RAB found the factory following a drive conducted at the area for 48 hours till the early hours of Thursday.

RAB-7 commander lieutenant colonel MA Yusuf said the RAB officials arrested three factory workers and recovered some firearms and weapons-making equipment from their possession.

They learnt about the factory from Pekuar Kabir, a notorious pirate of the coast. The factory was led by a robber named Abdul Hamid at Jhumpara of Taitong. The weapons made in the factory were bought, sold and supplied to local terrorists, pirates as well as terrorists from different parts of the country including Dhaka and Chattogram.

He added that a team of Chattogram RAB-7 conducted a two-day long operation in Pekua on Tuesday noon, which ended on Wednesday. The elite force located the gang’s whereabouts and tracked them down in two hills among the 11 in which the elite force carried out the operation. The officers detained three workers though the ringleader Abdul Hamid managed to escape.

Among the three arrestees, robber Amirul is a skilled weapon maker.

Last week, a team of Chattogram RAB-7 held a pirate team leader Kabir Ahmed and his 14 accomplices from the coastal area of Cox’s Bazar.