Taking advantage of coronavirus Yaba trades are stocking a huge amount of the pills in the capital, said a high intelligence official on Friday.
Smuggling of yaba into the country is still rampant through different land and waterways of the Bay of Bengal through bordering points in Cox's Bazar from neighbouring Myanmar and other land points in India, detective sources said.
The official told the Daily Observer on Friday that everyone got panicked and it had created a worldwide panic. Law enforcers too are scared of checking passengers.
However, intelligences surveillance is continuing, he said.
Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) seized 3.10 lakh contraband yaba tablets worth about Tk9.30 crore from Cox's Bazar's Teknaf.
Lt Col Mohammad Faisal Hasan Khan, Commanding Officer of BGB Teknaf-2 at a press release said, "We got a tip-off that a large number of yaba tablets were being smuggled into the country from Myanmar."
"A BGB patrol team took position at Damdomia BOP. We saw 3 smugglers entering into Bangladesh territory," he added.
Being challenged by the BGB team, the smugglers fled the scene leaving behind the Yaba tablets. Later BGB recovered 3.10 lakh yaba tablets.
According to police, retail sellers give a consumer a small consignments of yaba pills, let us say, 10 pills. The deal is that they get to consume two pills for free if they can sell the remaining eight.
Once the consumer-cum-seller builds a circle of yaba customers, the retailers start giving them bigger consignments and he starts earning monetary commissions. Over a period, more end users become small retailers and this continues.
Many of these end users-cum-small retail sellers are college and university students, especially those living in the residential dormitories. According to police, there are several hundred thousands of them including the students.
Over 500 listed drug dealers have been killed, out of which over 60 from Teknaf in Cox's Bazaar in separate gunfights with law enforcers during the countrywide massive anti-narcotic crackdown since May in 2018. At the same time, over one lakh have also been arrested.
Evading the eyes of law enforcers including Border Guard of Bangladesh (BGB), such dangerous drug items are entering into the country including in the capital through its different bordering points every day. Drug addicts, mostly youngsters including both male and female gather at different drug sale points from afternoon till mid-night.
Intelligence sources said most of the drugs are sold in the drug dens. They include heroin, yaba, cannabis and phensidyl.
The highest number of illegal drug spots has been identified in Jatrabari, Demra, Shyampur and Kadamtoli where 93 drug dens have been spotted.
Another 72 drug dens have been found in Dhanmondi, Hazaribagh and New Market while 49 others are being run in Pallabi.
