DHAKA: Bangladesh police arrested a Rohingya man with $5 million of methamphetamine pills in their biggest narcotics haul this year, officials said Monday.
Special police staged a raid on a beach in the Cox’s Bazar district on the border with Myanmar on Sunday following a tip that a trawler carrying the drugs would land there, a spokesman said.
The spokesman said 800,000 pills were found in sacks in the trawler and one Rohingya suspect was detained while several others escaped.
Some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims flooded across the border after a Myanmar military clampdown in August 2017 and drug dealing has become a growing problem in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar where they live.
The seizure was the biggest made this year of the methamphetamine pills, known as yaba, which have become a popular drug among young people in the nation of 168 million.
Since a crackdown was launched last year, more than 500 suspected drug traffickers — including at least 25 Rohingya — have been shot dead by police and security forces.
