Bangladesh Navy yesterday lodged two cases with Patenga Police Station against 90 people including 82 Myanmar nationals in connection with an attempt to send 625 people to Malaysia by sea illegally.
Bangladesh Navy Ship Durjoy’s Executive Officer Lt Commander Mahbubur Rahman lodged a case under Foreign Citizen Control Act and the other under Human Trafficking Prevention and Suppression Act.
Patenga Police Station Officer-in-Charge (OC) Kazi Sahabuddin Ahmed said 14 Myanmar nationals are sued in both cases.
On Monday around 9:35am, BNS Durjoy rescued 614 people and 21 boatmen from Bay of Bengal, 135 nautical miles southwest from Saint Martin’s Island, when they were being sent to Malaysia illegally through the unnamed Myanmar-flag hoisted trawler.
The detainees were fetched to Chittagong city on Tuesday around 6:30pm. Navy handed the detainees over to police on Tuesday night while police released all but 85 people and 12 children, added the OC.
The arrestees were produced before a court till filing of this report, he further added.
During primary interrogation police found arrested Myanmar national Aung Kai drove the 25-meter-long fishing trawler where the huge number of people was kept jam-packed.
The trawler was waiting in deep sea for 12-15 days and by the time traffickers gathered victims in small groups into the trawler from some areas of Bangladesh and Myanmar, said the arrested traffickers.
The traffickers marked the hands of victims with a sign to count them and when some of them tried to erase it in an effort to flee the traffickers used to beat them.
“My younger brother, Mahbub Bashar, who is in Malaysia, asked me to send people there in exchange for Tk6,000 for each person,” said arrested human trafficker Gul Mohammad lliving in Potiya upazila in Chittagong for few years who comes from Chattar area of Myanmar.
“My brother also went abroad by sea a few years ago with the help of his expatriate brother-in-law Kala Mia, who went their illegally while I, along with four others, were aboard the trawler for nine days before it was intercepted by Bangladesh Navy,”
he said.
“Two local human traffickers – Rahimullah of Teknaf upazila in Cox’s Bazar and Khulla Mia of Sabrang area in Teknaf – managed the four others,” he also added.
He further said one Anwar, son of Yunus who is chairman of Merula area in Myanmar, collected people and supplied them to the trawler,
Another alleged Bangladeshi human trafficker Mohammad Hashem of Potiya upazila said he along with 11 others worked in the trawler as cook.
He said he was a fisherman and his master left him and some others on the trawler at deep sea at one stage of fishing.
“We only served people on the instruction of those the trawler belonged to and provoked crews of other fishing boats to go to Malaysia at low cost,” he added.
Rescued Victim Elam Bahar of Teknaf upazila in Cox’s Bazar told the Dhaka Tribune her husband was in Malaysia and she attempted to go to her husband as a local middleman offered her.