The Infamous Arges Grenades of South Asia

Posted on January 23, 2009 0 Comments430

During the attack on Mumbai in November 2008, the terrorists had used Arges anti-personnel grenades to kill and maim its victims. The brand is produced by Rheinmetall Waffe Munition Arges of Austria, a manufacturer of high explosive hand grenades. This infantry explosive weapon, if it explodes three feet above the ground, sprays shrapnel up to a kill distance of 25 feet in which at least forty per cent of the area is bound to be penetrated unless stopped by an obstruction, perhaps a human. It could be, blatantly or stealthily, planted or lobbed amidst a gathering of people with time delays of up to seven seconds, and create mayhem. Under the UN Conventions, falling under the category of small arms and light weapons, its status is required to be accounted for and its sale and transfer reported under relevant laws prevailing in South Asia.

However, despite these global and national control mechanisms in force, the Arges grenade has continuously made its appearance, each time with devastating effect in India and Bangladesh. Since its first known use in1993, it has emerged as the most popular terrorist weapon in the region. Slightly bigger than a cricket ball, it does not take a big effort to conceal, carry and eventually use.

Arges grenades were used in the thirteen bomb attacks in Mumbai in March 1993 and similar grenades were used by terrorists during the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. Exactly a year later, Arges grenades were recovered from the personal effects of terrorists who were killed in an encounter with the Delhi Police on 13 December 2002. 13 grenades were also later seized in Nagpur by the local police during a search and seizure exercise. During the Mumbai attack, even the dead bodies were booby trapped with Arges grenades as improvised explosive devices. Their use by Pakistan-sponsored terrorist groups in J&K has been a regular feature perhaps, not reported by Indian media.

Attacks in Bangladesh portend an extremely dangerous trend. There was a flagrant use of Arges grenades in the assassination attempt on Sheikh Hasina Wajed, then a leader of opposition in which twenty people died and over 200 were injured on 21 August 2004. Important clues were lost when unexploded grenades found at the scene were detonated by an army team at the site of the attack but not before TV viewers could discern that the grenades were marked Arges. Enforcement agencies seized nearly 130 Arges Grenades after that militant strike.

The seized grenades were in possession of outlawed Islamist militant outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), which had carried out the major grenade attacks in the country. HuJI members had smuggled in the Arges brand and 41 grenades were captured from an operative in a village in Satkhira bordering India, perhaps to be smuggled into the latter.

Moulana Tajuddin, member of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba was named for supplying grenades for the August 2004 attack. He had facilitated Bangladesh as a transit point and the grenades were to be sent to India through Bangladesh. In fact, grenades and firearms were also seized in Chittagong on 2 April 2004 which were to be sent to India through two key insurgent groups from India’s Northeast – the ULFA and the NSCN-IM.

The HuJI members had also used these grenades during the attacks on the British High Commissioner to Bangladesh, former finance minister SAMS Kibria and Awami League leader Suranjit Sengupta. Since 2003, at least eight grenade attacks were carried out in the country leaving over 50 people dead and hundreds injured.

The Arges brand was first smuggled into the country in mid-2003 and the maiden haul was made with twenty grenades in Dhaka on 30 November. There were continuous instances of seizures from Khulna, Kishoreganj, Banani, Moghbazar in the capital, Sirajganj, Thakurgaon, Dinajpur and Sherpur ,all districts of Bangladesh.

Austria is a State Party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and for them this issue of Arges grenades is alive since the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. However, no concrete steps seem to have been taken to ensure that these grenades cease to be used by terrorists. When confronted with the Mumbai attack evidence, a Rheinmetall AG official stated that, “Pakistan’s military is counterfeiting hand grenades that were used in the terrorist attack. Arges delivered tools and components to Pakistan which could be used to build hand grenades from 1978 until 1991, but it never granted Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) a license for the production” with its label. The most damming act however is that the POF’s web site advertises the “Arges 84-P2A1 antipersonnel” grenade but without it’s own manufacturer’s logo The Pakistan Defense Forum shows the origin of Arges HG 84P2A1 hand grenades as procured by the Pakistan Army.

Prashant Dikshit is Former Deputy Director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi. His article was first published on January 21, 2009, at www.ipcs.org

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