The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) yesterday said it busted an international drug racket by arresting five peddlers, including three women, in Dhaka. RAB legal and media wing director Mufti Mahmud Khan told reporters that the accused were arrested during different raids in the city’s Airport police station area.

The arrestees were identified as Fatema Imam Tania (26), Afsana Mimi (23), Salma Sultana (26), Sheikh Mohammad Badhon alias Parvez (28) and Ruhul Amin alias Saymon (29).

The RAB official said the accused were linked to the smuggling of a huge quantity of drugs which was seized in Sri Lanka last December. “The detainees carried, supplied and also distributed drugs. They have links to narcotics rings in Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Malaysia and Sri Lanka,” he said.

“We have primarily come to know that the drug routes are from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, via Pakistan and another is from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, via Pakistan and Malaysia,” he added.

The RAB has also recovered 1,970 yaba pills, foreign currency notes and passports from the five peddlers. During primary interrogation, they have confessed to being involved in an international drug racket.

The RAB media director also said that some of the gang members lived abroad.

“We have got some names and information, but cannot disclose them now for the sake of our investigation,” he added.

On December 31, 2018, Sri Lankan police had seized 272 kg of heroin and five kg of cocaine during a special operation at a housing complex on Templers Road in Colombo’s Mount Lavinia area. The haul was worth Tk. 1.52 billion.

Two Bangladeshis—Mohammed Jamaluddin of Bogura and Rafiul Islam of Joypurhat—were caught in that operation. The two had landed in Sri Lanka on December 23 last year, according to police in that country.

Earlier on December 14, two suspects were arrested in Nugegoda, a suburb in Colombo, with one kg of heroin hidden in a cake box, Sri Lankan police said.

The next day, a Bangladeshi woman called ‘Surjamoni’ was arrested with another haul of heroin hidden in a cake box. A police search of her rented house in Colombo had led to the discovery of 31 kg of heroin.

The hauls caused a sensation and led to the New Year’s Eve raid at Mount Lavinia, conducted jointly by Sri Lanka’s Police Narcotics Bureau and Special Task Force. During the operation, packets, containers and luggage items filled with heroin were found everywhere in the house. On 31 December last year, the Sri Lankan police had mentioned that three Bangladeshis, including a woman, were held in Colombo for their alleged involvement in drug trafficking.

Following a request by the Sri Lankan government, Bangladesh high commissioner M Riaz Hamidullah had assured Colombo of full cooperation in the investigation.

On January 5, the Department of Narcotics Control had detained one ‘Choice Rahman’ from a house in Dhaka’s Uttara area. Rahman was named in a case by the CID filed at Uttara West police station.

Later, the arrests of three women suspects, based on information provided by law enforcers in Colombo, were reported in the media. They were allegedly involved in smuggling drugs to Colombo.