Chittagong Bureau :The officials of Bangladesh Navy on Thursday seized some 90,000 pieces of contraband Yaba tablets worth Tk4.55 crore from an engine-run boat in the outer anchorage of Chittagong Port the in Bay of Bengal.Commander Shamim Mohammad Khan said, “On suspicion, the officials of SWAD [special warfare diving and salvage] tried to approach the boat around 1:00am while patrolling around. The naval personnel were conducting a drive led by Commander Aswaya Rasel with the BN Ship ‘Nirbhik’ at that time.” “Sensing our presence, the drug traders jumped of the boat in the water and managed to swim ashore. Later, we recovered the yaba tablets after searching the boat and seized it,” he said. None was, however, arrested in this connection as the passengers of the boat fled away through another boat sensing presence of the BN members.Security officials said the Yaba smugglers have changed their route. They are now using small boats and fishing trawlers through the Karnafully waterways to transport the narcotics inside Bangladesh. On August 24, the members of the Bangladesh Coast Guard [BCG] recovered 2 lakh pieces of Yaba tablets worth about Tk 10 crore from a small boat in the estuary of the Karnaphuli river in Chittagong. It was the biggest haul of drugs seized in the riverine routes.The BCG had also seized 1.5 lakh pieces Yaba tablets along with a trawler at Swandip coast earlier on June 30.Apart from it, the RAB seized largest ever cache of Yaba of 2, 70, 000 tablets from Asadganj area of Chittagong May 18, 2012.
