THREE police were suspended after a female Yaba peddler fled from police custody at Patiya Police Station under Chattogram district on Sunday. The absconding Laiju Begum was carrying 1900 Yaba pills. It is believed that police are closely involved with illicit trade and protecting drug peddlers in the region. Such negligence of police recalled us how they had let the drug kingpin, who is also ruling party leader, live at large. The law enforcers have so far seized millions of notorious pills and nabbed hundreds of petty drug peddlers but the drug network is still active. With law enforcers locking up listed drug dealers and smugglers, new groups are filling their shoes adopting generous marketing strategies, including sales on credit. They are also using new routes to smuggle in Yaba from Myanmar. Police have come to know about 250 such “newcomers” in the business after interrogating the 63 listed Yaba godfathers and dealers, who recently surrendered to police in Cox’s Bazar.
Members of this new group have not been named in any intelligence report. During the anti-drug operations, around 480 alleged drug traders were killed in ‘gunfights’. But now the sales of drugs in the capital and other parts of the country have further increased. The authorities concerned in recent times have played a dual game: one hand, it protected the godfathers of the drug business, on the other hand it ‘killed’ petty drug peddlers without sealing off the border. Only imposing restriction on drug trading would not control the drug addiction; rather the government should focus on despair of unemployed youth, who are the prime customers of the notorious pill.
The war against drug has turned into easy police cases. There are allegations that police justify such arrests by putting drugs into one’s possession.
