Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) detained four alleged Yaba traders including ‘Yaba King’ Alam, along with 1, 23,000 pieces of the contraband tablets from West Dhanmondi in the capital on Wednesday. The arrestees are Md Alam, 40, his younger brother Md Jasim Uddin, 23, Md Salauddin, 27, and Md Mizanur Rahman, 33, all hailing from Cox’s Bazar district. Alam is engaged in transport business, and runs his illegal drug trade through this. Alam also owns a resort in Cox's Bazar, said Anwar-uz-Zaman, commander of RAB-2, at a press conference yesterday in the capital’s Karwan Bazar.

During initial interrogation Alam told RAB that he studied up to third grade. He first started doing land business and later cottage rent business in Cox’s bazar with the help of his friends. At one stage he met a drug dealer from Myanmar and joined in Yaba business, said the RAB official.

To expand his drug trade, he stared the transport business to ship Yaba to Dhaka from Shamim Guest House at Kolatoli in Cox’s Bazar in the guise of transport business. Yaba was also supplied to drug dealers in different districts of the country including the capital, said RAB. Alam's younger brother Jasim Uddin, a third year student of Sociology in Dhaka College, got involved in the drug trade

on the advice of his elder brother Alam. He used to supply yaba at school; college drug addicted students and his friends and rented a flat in Dhanmondi for this purpose.

Md Salauddin is working as Alam’s assistant, and also works as a mechanic at a motor workshop. Mizanur Rahman worked as a helper in a bus in Cox's Bazar. Later, in the hope of earning money quickly, they got involved in Alam’s transport business and Yaba trade, said RAB.