No end of drug menace in sight
The death toll in the countrywide anti-drug drive over the last 13 months has crossed 400, with four more reported extrajudicial killings in Cox’s Bazar and Cumilla on Sunday, with no end of the menace in sight.
The New Age correspondent in Cox’s Bazar reported that three suspected drug peddlers were killed in a ‘gunfight’ with Rapid Action Battalion-15 personnel on the hilly way of Hoykong union in Teknaf upazila under Cox’s Bazar district at about 2:30am on Sunday.
The three persons were: Dil Mohammad, 42, son of Sultan Ahmed and Rashedul Islam, 24, son of Mohammad Yunus of Chowdhury Para in Cox’s Bazar municipal area under Cox’s Bazar district, and Shahidul Islam, 40, son of Abul Kashem of Masterhat village in Amirabad union of Lohagara upazila under Chattogram district.
Dil Mohammad and Rashedul lived at Cox’s Bazar while Shahidul at Chattogram.
The RAB claimed that both Dil Mohammad and Shahidul were Saudi expatriates and used to control drug peddling.
The elite force team said that they arrested Shahidul on Saturday, took him with them to a raid to the spot on early hours Sunday, where they were locked into a gunfight with his accomplices. The gunfight left the three dead on the site.
The RAB members also seized four local guns, 21 rounds of bullets and 1.40 lakh Yaba tablets from their possession.
RAB personnel Mohammad Jahangir and Sohel were injured in the gunfight, the officials claimed.
According to RAB-15 Teknaf camp commander Lieutenant Md Mirza Shahed Mahtab, following the gunfight the team recovered the three bodies, illegal fire arms and 1.40 lakh Yaba pills from the spot.
Later, they handed over the bodies to Teknaf police station for post mortem. A case has been filed with the police station in this connection.
The Cumilla correspondent reported that a drug dealer was killed in a ‘gunfight’ with Border Guard Bangladesh troops at Mathurapura in Sadar South upazila on Sunday early morning.
The police identified the victim as Abul Hashem, 52, son of Minnat Ali of Birahipur village.
BGB 10 commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Abu Mohammad Mohiuddin said that a group of BGB members, acting on a tip-off, conducted an anti-narcotics operation at Mathura, where they came under gunfire from suspected drug vendors.
The BGB members returned the fire, seriously injuring drug peddler Hashem, who was taken to Cumilla Medical College Hospital. He was declared dead there.
The commanding officer also said that 18,380 pieces of Yaba pills were found from the drug trader. The body was sent to morgue for autopsy.
With these latest casualties, the number of deaths in the on-going nationwide anti-drug drive since May 15, 2018 now stands at 403.
Department of Narcotics Control officials said that about 1.19 lakh cases were filed against about 1.50 lakh people while over 5.50 crore pieces of Yaba, among others, were seized nationwide by different law enforcement agencies between May 2018 and April 30, 2019.
The anti-drug drive began on May 4, 2018 but the crackdown on suspected drug peddlers started in earnest on May 15, 2018 just a day after a Bangladesh delegation led by law minister Anisul Huq completed a hearing at the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review Working Group in Geneva on May 14, 2018.
At least 403 suspected drug peddlers were killed in reported crossfires or gunfights, or were found dead in the ongoing drive during the period, according to media reports. More than one fourth of the deaths took place in Cox’s Bazar, the main route of the Yaba trade into Bangladesh.
Rapid Action Battalion statistics show that 104 suspected drug peddlers were killed in reported gunfights with its personnel between May 3, 2018 and May 1, 2019 while it arrested 24,898 suspects, seized 1.06 lakh Myanmar-made Yaba pills and 1,49,695 bottles of Indian Phensedyl syrup, among others.
Prison officials said that 28,321 people were detained in jails as of March 25, 2019 in drug-related cases.
During the drive, personnel from the army, Border Guard Bangladesh, the coast guard and the police, among others, were, too, arrested while rights groups alleged that opposition political activists were also targeted and killed.
The government in the past one year took numerous initiatives, including restricting mobile banking services in Cox’s Bazar, forming additional units of the Rapid Action Battalion and launching money-laundering investigations against suspected drug dealers.
Despite these initiatives and death of one suspect every day on an average, the supply of the illicit drugs, especially Myanmar’s Yaba tablets, continued to come in and be available to their users, said law enforcement officials.
Cox’s Bazar superintendent of police ABM Masud Hossain said that they had tried to disrupt the ‘uninterrupted flow of Yaba’ from Myanmar and succeeded on many counts.
But, he suggested, barbed wire fences should be installed along the 10 kilometres of Bangladesh-Myanmar border to effectively curb the smuggling of Yaba produced in Myanmar.
On the other hand, rights activists since the very beginning have been advocating for massive awareness programmes against the use of drugs across the country and a continued consultation with the Myanmar authorities to this end.
But, legislators and law enforcers at a meeting in Dhaka in early April blamed each other for the nexus of the administration with those involved in the drug trade and drug-related crimes.
News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net
