Police rescued 39 people, who were being taken to Cox’s Bazar to be shipped off to Malaysia, from a bus on Shah Amanat Bridge in Chittagong city yesterday morning.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, Mohammad Mohsin, officer-in-charge of Bakalia police station said they received a tip-off and raided the Cox’s Bazar-bound bus around 11am and rescued the potential victims of human trafficking.
All of the rescued people are in the age group of 20-25, coming from Sylhet, Narsingdi and Shariatpur districts, police said. No trafficker in connection to this has been arrested.
Mohsin said: “These people arrived in the port city two days ago. They were kept in a residential hotel for a day before being moved to a shanty in the city.
“They were sent off to Cox’s Bazar by a person, whose name they could not tell us, at the city’s Bahaddarhat area, and were supposed to be received by another person in Chakaria, Cox’s Bazar.”
The OC said they were scheduled to be sent off to Malaysia via a trawler last night.
After the rescue, Bakalia police kept the rescued in the police station in order to send them home. A case was lodged with the police station in this regard.
Different law enforcement agencies have rescued about 100 people in the port city from getting trafficked to Malaysia since September this year.
Sources at these agencies said due to the calm condition of the Bay of Bengal after the rainy season and a strong vigilance by law enforcers in Cox’s Bazar and other border areas, human traffickers have made Chittagong and its outskirts their base for business.
“Compared to any other time of the year, more people – lined up for trafficking – are rounded up in the port city after monsoon because the sea is calm then,” said Banaz Kumar Majumder, additional commissioner of crime and operation at Chittagong Metropolitan Police.
Police sources said there are at least four syndicates involved with human trafficking in the country, who are using the coastal areas of Sitakunda, Bashkhali, Maheshkhali, Teknaf and Cox’s Bazar as embarkation points.
Specialists say the key members of the syndicates are usually expatriate Bangladeshis living in various countries, who maintain strong networks abroad to be able to traffic people from Bangladesh.
Dr Zakir Hossain, professor at the law faculty in Chittagong University, said: “As the Border Guard Bangladesh and Bangladesh Coast Guard are strengthening vigilance in some of the border areas, Chittagong stands out to be a relatively safe option for traffickers. They just make sure that the people are put on board some of the foreign vessels that come to the Chittagong port.
“As the sea is vast and it is not always possible to keep watch on every corner, the task of the traffickers gets easy,” he said.
