Narinjara News


Six including two Burmese nationals held with heroin in southeastern Bangladesh

Dhaka, 13^th August 03:  Six drug traffickers including two Burmese nationals with one kilogram of heroin were arrested last week in the southeastern district of Bandarban in Bangladesh close to Burmese border, according to a BSS report.

On inquiry we came to know that two of the traffickers were from Burma and their alleged names are Kyaw Than Naing and Aung Lwin.  The arrested persons have been kept under Alikadam police custody in the Bandarban Hill District and two separate cases have been filed against them.

In recent months reports have been received about the sighting of twenty armed people who did not have the Burmese Army uniform roaming in the border areas of Bandarban Hill District, in the deep forests of Naikkhyaungchari, close to Maungdaw Township (on Burmese side).

Local people guess that the group has carried smuggled goods including heroin and was looking for new drug contacts along the porous border.  Members of the group speak Burmese, which is not the local language, and they buy food from the local villages, but none is allowed to go to their temporary camps. 

Opium and its various derivatives including heroin is basically produced in the Golden Traiangle.  According to the monitoring report of the Drug and Narcotics Control of Bangladesh the volume of drug trafficking began to rise since 1995 and its consumption picked up the race, too.  A DNC official on condition of anonymity told the Independent that seventy percent of heroin and opium in Bangladesh come from the Golden Triangle area. 

Again the possibility of using Bangladesh as a transit route for drugs from Burma on the face of an all-out campaign to free the country from the scourge of drugs in Thailand cannot be ruled out, he added. 

Meanwhile Bangladesh has a long porous land border with Burma whereas smugglers have used the sea route across the Burmese coast to the coasts of Bangladesh since time immemorial. #