The bordering areas of different upazilas in Moulvibazar are being used as a "safe transit route" by human traffickers to help the Rohingya refugees sneak into India.
Many of the detained refugees, including women and children, said that they either tried to enter India after fleeing from the camps in Cox's Bazar or just returned from the neighbouring country.
Analysing their account, it is evident that they always considered the district's porous borders a "safe passage" to and from India.
At least 97 Rohingya refugees have been nabbed in the district in the last 22 months, with the latest detention of three Rohingya women from Dholoi border area in Kamalganj Upazila yesterday.
Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) members said they are residents of the Sobulla Kata Camp in Cox's Bazar's Ukhiya.
On June 6, the BGB members detained two refugees from a tea garden in the same upazila. In the third last incident, locals apprehended three Rohingyas as they were trying to enter India via the Sadar upazila's Shyamerkona Bazar on May 13. They were later handed over to the police.
On December 17 last year, as many as 16 Rohingya people were detained from a bus in Sreemangal. On the same day, police captured a young Rohingya man in Juri Upazila.
How do they do it?
According to sources, the Rohingyas primarily contact local human traffickers before fleeing from the camps. For instance, nine people were detained in Juri on December 14 on suspicion of being Rohingyas. In primary interrogation by police, they revealed that eight of them are Myanmar nationals.
They first came in touch with the ninth man – a Bangladeshi citizen – who promised to help cross the border. Coming out of the camps, they directly went to Moulvibazar town; then they reached the bordering area of Kachurgul Nalapunji under Goalbari Union of Juri.
A broker named Suman, according to the detainees, rented several CNG-run auto-rickshaws that took them to his house near the border. Around 9pm, they trespassed on Indian land, where another two brokers received them and put them on a bus to New Delhi.
But the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) nabbed them right away and pushed them back to Bangladesh through the Kachurgul Nalapunji border crossing.
AHM Saleh Sohel, a member of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), demanded a thorough investigation into the escape of the Rohingyas from the refugee camps.
"This trend of trying to dodge our law enforcers is so dangerous," he warned.
Moulvibazar District Judge Court's Assistant Government Pleader Jahidul Haq Kochi termed the advent of Rohingyas in the district a criminal act.
"Their arrival here is threatening to us and the law-and-order situation," he said, urging the authorities concerned to be stricter in this regard.
Mohammad Zakaria, the district superintendent of police, said that they received the names of some locals from the Kulaura Upazila, who are said to be linked to the crime.
"But we could not arrest any of them. We're alert about the matter," he said.
The police official, however, argued that the number of Rohingyas entering Moulvibazar is not "that big" and that all of them are arrested and sent back to Cox's Bazar immediately.