A GUN magazine containing bullets was found in a travel bag of the adviser to the interim government on local government, rural development and cooperatives Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuiyan, also the adviser on youth and sports, at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka in the morning on June 29 when he was headed for Morocco to attend the OIC Youth Capital International Programme in Marrakesh. Newspapers and other news outlets have widely reported the incident, referring to Dhaka airport and Special Branch officials. Whilst he left the magazine back with his protocol officer and flew to Morocco in a Turkish Airlines flight, later he sought to explain in a Facebook posting that he owned licensed weapons for personal security and the magazine at hand had been left unintentionally in his bag when he was packing. But the story has not ended there as it has brought forth some questions along with some issues for the government to investigate and some others to publicly explain.
Firearms licensing rules and regulations say that for anyone to own firearms, the minimum age of the gun holder should be 30 years and the payment of Tk 100,000 in income tax for the three consecutive preceding years in the case of shotguns and Tk 300,000 in the case of pistols, revolvers and rifles. The local government ministry web site suggests that the adviser at hand is well below the age that is required in the minimum for gun licensing. But there has been a priority provision for people of the rank of minister and some others, making an exemption of them from the provisions. Yet, the government has to see whether all the procedures have been duly followed about his gun licensing and the purchase of the gun. The government had better explain the issue in public, making clear what types of guns the adviser at hand carries. The government should also see whether other formalities about owning a gun, such as the depositing the firearms with relevant public authorities for safekeeping when the owner travels overseas, have been maintained. Anyone carrying firearms or bullets should have made a declaration with the authorities when he entered the airport. Above all else, the event could have been an international scandal if the magazine had slipped the watchful eye at the Dhaka airport and had, subsequently, been detected at an airport outside Bangladesh. The magazine is, in fact, reported to have been detected at the last checkpoint.
The government must, therefore, investigate the adviser and also see whether other procedures about gun licensing and purchase have been duly followed. And, it must make all findings of the investigation public.