Mohammad Jamil Khan

As drives to clamp down on narcotics trade intensify, drug dealers are developing innovative techniques and finding new routes to dodge arrest.

Rohingya crime gangs have resorted to murder, abduction and extortion to establish their supremacy at Cox’s Bazar refugee camps and control drug trades.

An Indian company sold virtual poker chips in Bangladesh and took the lion’s share of Tk 168 crore out of the country, a CTTC investigation found.

There have been conflicts on the Myanmar side over the last two months with sounds of heavy gunfire and mortal shelling sending a wave of panic across the border into Bangladesh. But it has hardly created any impact on the yaba smuggling.

Drug traffickers posing as fishermen are smuggling in stashes of yaba pills from Myanmar through the Naf river in Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, amid lax enforcement of a ban on fishing in the river, according to several intelligence officials and men involved in the trade.

To change their fortunes, three Bangladeshis went abroad, after handing over all their savings to a transnational trafficking syndicate.

A transnational syndicate is using a new land route through Myanmar to traffic people, mostly Rohingyas from refugee camps in Bangladesh, to Thailand and Malaysia.

It only costs Tk 2,000 to get the username and password of an administrator of the Surokkha website/app, which is used to register for Covid jabs and verify vaccination status.

Amid allegations of bias, the Election Commission yesterday asked the deputy commissioners and superintendents of police to perform their election duties impartially.

Seven years ago, Mohammad Sabuj and his neighbour Mohiuddin Sarkar from Cumilla’s Daudkandi paid around Tk 13 lakh to six people who lured them with well-paying jobs in Germany. 

Shah Azam, 28, a yaba godfather of Teknaf, surrendered to police on February 16, 2019, promising to leave the drug business and never engage in the trade again. He was sent to jail at the time and released in November 2020.

To collect funds, increase organisational strength, and avoid arrest, Al-Qaeda-inspired militant outfit Ansar Al Islam is now sending its permanent members abroad.

Ansar al Islam, which claims to be the Bangladesh chapter of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, has received about Tk 1.5 crore in the last three and half years from people in the UK and Australia for its operational activities as the militant outfit looks to stage a comeback.

A government employee, schoolteachers, doctors and imams were found to have links with seven youths who ran away from their Cumilla homes last month, said CTTC and Rab officials.

Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology has recently dismissed a parliamentary standing committee’s recommendation for closing down TikTok in the country.

As firing and mortar shelling in Myanmar were now heard from Ukhiya border of Cox’s Bazar yesterday, the local authorities warned the boat owners of not carrying Rohingyas amid fear of their fresh entry.

Amid incessant gunfire and mortar shelling in Myanmar close to the Bangladesh border, the local administration is planning to evacuate around 300 families in Ghumdhum union of Bandarban’s Naikhongchhari upazila. 

Thirty-year-old Noor Hasina lives in a house in Konarpara along the Tambru border in Bandarban’s Naikhongchhari upazila.

Amid fears of fresh entry of Rohingyas into Bangladesh, following the continuous assaults by the Myanmar military against the Arakan Army along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in the past few weeks, the government has said they are trying to repatriate Rohingyas  peacefully.

The Myanmar military’s continuous air and ground assaults against the Arakan Army (AA) along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in the past few weeks have triggered fears of fresh entry of Rohingyas into the country.