New Delhi/Dhaka, Jan 20 (PTI) As around 15 per cent of the firearms and nearly 30 per cent of the ammunition looted during the 2024 Bangladesh unrest remain unaccounted for, security experts have raised
concerns over a potential surge in gun-related violence ahead of the national elections.
As many as 5,753 firearms and approximately 651,609 rounds of ammunition were looted from police stations, outposts, vehicles and detention facilities across Bangladesh following widespread attacks on law enforcement installations during the July-August 2024 uprising that led to the fall of the Sheikh Hasina-led government, news portal tbsnews.net reported on Tuesday.
Despite year-long recovery drives, as of late 2025 and early 2026, at least 1,362 firearms and an estimated 250,000 rounds of ammunition remain missing, it said.
The missing cache includes rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, pistols, tear gas launchers and other weapons.
According to security experts, a surge in politically linked shootings, coupled with thousands of looted firearms still unaccounted for, ahead of the Feb 12 election, is a matter of grave concern.
"The missing weapons are indeed a serious and genuine concern as the country moves towards the elections. The overall security situation has yet to fully stabilise, and recent months have already witnessed a number of politically motivated murders involving firearms," Muhammad Nurul Huda, former inspector general of Bangladesh Police, was quoted as saying by the news portal.
Echoing his views, Major General ANM Muniruzzaman (retd), president of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies, said the operational capacity of law enforcement agencies remained weak despite more than a year having passed since the unrest.
A significant portion of the looted weapons is yet to be recovered. Combined with limited enforcement capacity, this has made the situation fragile and will pose a major challenge to maintaining the required level of law and order ahead of the election, he said.
According to the tbsnews.net report, Bangladesh has a long history of politically linked violence intensifying ahead of national elections. What distinguishes the current phase is not merely the frequency of attacks, but the visibility of firearms in conflicts that were previously dominated by crude weapons or muscle power.
In recent months, multiple incidents involving illegal firearms have occurred in Chattogram, Jashore, Cox's Bazar, Khulna, Pabna, Gazipur, and Dhaka, leaving political activists, businesspeople and citizens dead or injured and heightening anxiety among election candidates, it said.
On January 7, Azizur Rahman Musabbir, a former general secretary of the Swechchhasebak Dal’s Dhaka North City unit, was shot dead in Dhaka, while his associate Abu Sufian Bepari Masud was critically injured. On December 12 last year, Inqilab Mancha spokesperson Sharif Osman Hadi was shot in the capital shortly after the election schedule was announced and later succumbed to his injuries.
"The operational sophistication of these killings, carried out using firearms, exposes a reality that law enforcement assessments often understate: guns are not only present, but deployable, accessible, and increasingly normalised in political violence," the report noted.
It also underlined a marked rise in shootings linked to political rivalries, factional disputes and criminal networks, particularly since the announcement of the election schedule in December last year.
Candidates have also voiced fears. A video of BNP candidate and Swechchhasebak Dal central president SM Zilani from Gopalganj-3 recently went viral after he was seen wearing a bulletproof vest and claiming that his life was under threat.
Swechchhasebak Dal is the volunteer wing of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Earlier this month, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said the government has failed to recover the looted weapons and that the law and order situation is yet to improve to a satisfactory level, calling it a "clear failure" of the authorities.
The interim government, however, maintains that the situation is under control.
The home ministry and police leadership have repeatedly highlighted arms recovery drives, publicised "most-wanted" lists, and announced cash rewards for information on illegal weapons, the tbsnews.net report said.
Home Affairs Adviser Jahangir Alam Chowdhury has even suggested that the situation is under control. In December last year, he stated that there had been no failure on the government's part in recovering illegal weapons. PTI SCY SCY
