Ahead of the national election due a little over a year from now, the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) has primarily identified 509 points as sensitive and prone to border crimes in a 910-km border area.
To prevent criminal activities, the BGB has intensified surveillance in the border areas especially to check the smuggling of arms and ammunition into the country before the national election, sources said.
Along Bangladesh’s 4,427 km border, 509 spots have been identified as being sensitive and prone to border crimes, while 910 km as initially sensitive and risky, according to BGB the sources.
They said that the government was setting up Border Observation Posts along Bangladesh’s 147 km of unprotected border—66 km with India and 81 km with Myanmar.
Sources said that, as part of its ‘zero tolerance policy’ against drugs, the government decided to create a new region to secure Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar to stop all illegal activities, particularly the inflow of contraband yaba tablets.
The paramilitary force alone seized over 1.19 crore yaba pieces in the last seven months this year. Besides the BGB, other agencies such as police, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Coast Guard and Department of Narcotic Control (DNC) recovered a huge number of yaba tablets during this period, says a BGB report.
The huge yaba haul suggests that the people of the country are exposed to severe harm due to cross-border smuggling of drugs from neighbouring Myanmar, though intoxicant drugs are not produced in Bangladesh.
BGB director general (DG) Major General Abul Hossain said, “The government has decided to create a region (in Teknaf) on an ad-hoc basis to secure the 271-km border with Myanmar.”
Referring to the seizure of over 1.19 crore yaba tablets in the last seven months, the BGB chief said, “We have already held a border conference with the Myanmar Police Force (MPF) to stop the smuggling of yaba. We have informed the Myanmar police about yaba smuggling into Bangladesh. The next conference is scheduled to be held in November,” he added.
“We have taken necessary measures to secure the Bangladesh border (Teknaf) with Myanmar by creating a region on the ad-hoc basis, ensuring fulltime intelligence surveillance, imposing a ban on all sorts of infiltration, conducting joint drives, and setting up check-posts to stop the inflow of yaba tablets,” he said.
BGB and police identified Bangladesh's south-eastern Teknaf border with Myanmar as the main route for yaba smuggling. BGB officials said the smugglers now opted for sea routes in view of intensified vigil on the Bangladesh-Myanmar frontier.
A major part of the illegal drug is reportedly smuggled regularly from Myanmar as Bangladesh shares around 271 km of border with the south-eastern neighbour, including 208 km of land border and 63 km of the Naaf River serving as a demarcation.
Statistics from Bangladesh’s Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) show that yaba that come from Myanmar tops the list of drugs smuggled into Bangladesh.
A DNC report said that among all the drugs, yaba was the most popular, and addiction to yaba in Bangladesh was on the rise. The report is based on the records of drugs recovered from 2008 to 2014.
The report stated that the number of yaba tablets recovered in 2008 was 36,543; in 2009 it was 129,644; in 2010 was 812,716; in 2011 was 1,360,186; in 2012 was 1,951,392; in 2013 was 2,821,528 and in 2014 it was 6,512,869. This shows that the rate of increase in 2014 was 17722.48 per cent compared to 2008 and 130.82 percent compared to 2013.
Of them, 47.83 per cent of yaba cases have been detected in the Dhaka zone and 30.43 per cent in Chittagong. Initially, Yaba was entering Bangladesh from the Chiang Mei province in Thailand via Myanmar in the 1990s. Yaba is generally produced in a round pill form. They are brightly coloured in red, orange and lemon green and carry logos such as “R” or “WY”.