The Detective Branch (DB) of the police on Thursday detained eleven people including ten Indian nationals in connection with smuggling and selling Indian products including stolen mobile phones in Bangladesh.
According to DB, the gang used to operate a two-way smuggling operation, trafficking stolen Bangladeshi phones to India and stolen Indian phones to Bangladesh.
Additional Deputy Commissioner of police and the Deputy Commissioner of DB Lalbagh division Mashiur Rahman said: “Following the arrest of ten Indians and one Bangladeshi national from Dhaka's Badda area, a DB Lalbagh division team revealed the syndicated operations.”
The arrestees are Raja Shao, 39, Pankaj Biswas, 35, Utpal Miti, 25, Sonu Barman, 21, Dipankar Gosh, 24, Raju Das, 22, Sujan Das, 27, SK Ajgar Ali, 21, Laraib Asrab, 21, and Samarjit Das, 30, all hail from different districts of West Bengal.
The arrested Bangladeshi partner is Murad Gazi, 28.
According to Mashiur, police confiscated a significant amount of Indian clothing, shoes, and cosmetics from the arrestees' belongings, along with 21 distinct brands of pilfered Indian mobile phones.
He said that the arrestees primarily confessed that they brought all of these goods illegally and without paying any taxes.
Furthermore, they acknowledged that they had brought the Indian items aboard the inter-country trains that travel between Kolkata and Dhaka Cantonment.
By smuggling those items illegally, this syndicate sold hundreds of stolen mobile phones, liquors, and beer bottles in Bangladesh. They were building up their inventory in front of Eid and Ramadan, said the DB official.
The syndicate mostly targeted expensive cell phones stolen from different crowded places in Bangladesh, he added.
The police officer said the presence of this syndicate explains why the phones could not be traced despite the arrest of the criminals.
