In an interesting turn of events, a man has been arrested in the Mohammadpur area of Dhaka in possession of heroin which the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) claimed he was possessing by using the “movement pass.”
Abdullah Al Mamun, assistant superintendent of police stationed at RAB 2, said that RAB, acting on a tip-off, intercepted Md Soumik Ahmed Siddiqui, 42, at a checkpoint in front of Town Hall Market in Mohammadpur early on Thursday.
A search revealed that Soumik was carrying 360 grams of the contraband drug item on the pretext of transporting masks and hand sanitizers.
The heroin is worth Tk32 lakh, Mamun said.
Based on intelligence reports, the elite force remained alert and was hunting members of a ring that had been smuggling narcotics from the border regions into sections of the capital city, including Mohammadpur, the RAB official said.
In continuation of the search for the crime racket, the RAB got hold of Soumik at 3:30am, he added.
Soumik, he said, had been smuggling drug consignments for some time now.
He primarily divulged some crucial information about the drug being smuggled and the ring members involved in this criminal act, Mamun said, adding that the law enforcers would continue such anti-narcotics raids.
Other than the heroin, the car Soumik was driving was also seized. A case was filed under the Narcotics Control Act against him.
Mohammadpur police station Officer-in-Charge Abdul Latif said Soumik was handed over to the police and he would be produced before a Dhaka court on the next working day.
‘Movement pass in the name of shipping masks, sanitizers’
The incident took place at a time when a number of allegations are surfacing that many people are misusing the movement pass.
Soumik obtained the movement pass, claiming that he would be using that for supplying masks and hand sanitizers during the Covid-19 pandemic, the RAB official said.
But he completely misused the special pass issued only for the strict lockdown as he brought drugs from the border areas and handed them to drug abusers and dealers across the capital.
Notably, police began to issue the “movement pass” from April 13, a day before the country went into a strict lockdown aimed at curbing the rapid transmission of Covid-19.
However, emergency service providers, including journalists, will not require the pass.
Till 11am on Wednesday, some 11,28,832 passes had been issued countrywide by Bangladesh Police Headquarters. Over 19.60 crore hits were recorded in the movement pass server for registration over the period.
According to the World Bank, the population of Bangladesh is a little over 16.3 crore as of 2019.