Staff Reporter :Police have arrested a drug peddler and seized 76,000 pieces of Yaba pills, worth about Tk 2.5 crore, from an office room used by Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited [BTCL] at Wari in the old part of Dhaka on Tuesday.The man has been identified as AB Siddique, 16. He used to transport the Yaba as per order of selected clients. Acting on a tip-off, a special squad of police led by Officer in-Charge of Wari Police Station Tapan Chandra Saha conducted a drive in the BTCL office housed on the ground floor of Wari Sub-Post office around 8:30am and arrested the drug trader, police sources said.”The sub-post office is situated on the Rankin Street,” Syed Nurul Islam, Deputy Police Commissioner of Wari Division, said. The operation was conducted at 8-30 AM.He said, “The post office is on the first floor and thepostmaster lives in the ground floor. BTCL uses one of the rooms of the ground floor to store equipment. The yaba pills were found in a big bag there.””Police are looking for a BTCL employee M Mostofa, 41, suspected to be linked with the Yaba trade. He managed to flee away the scene sensing the presence of police during the drive,” Monirul Islam, Joint Commissioner, Detective and Criminal Intelligence Division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said.He said, “We have enough information that Mostafa was involved with illegal drug business, and the drug dealers have been using the BTCL office as a selling center of Yaba tablet for a long time.”According to sources, Abu Bakar during preliminary interrogation reportedly said that he regularly brought Yaba consignments in the capital from Cox’s Bazar and a gang used the BTCL office for this business.The drug peddlers choose the BTCL office thinking that none would disturb their business in the government office.When contacted, Secretary of Posts & Telecommunications Division Md. Faizur Rahman Chowdhury expressed his annoyance at the Yaba recovery from a BTCL office in the city.”You know, nobody informed me about the drug haul though 10 hours passed by this time,” he told The New Nation yesterday evening.The secretary, however, admitted that the drug peddlers used the BTCL Wari office due to lack of proper supervision in the city sub-offices by the authorized officers.
