Security officials said they have detained over 6,700 suspected drug dealers across the country in the government’s ongoing ‘zero tolerance’ crackdown on drugs.
The aggressive anti-narcotic campaign has also taken lives of nearly 100 suspected drug dealers so far.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said the deaths were caused in ‘gunfights’ between the members of law-enforcement agencies and suspected drug dealers during raids, but human right groups called the killings as ‘extrajudicuial’.
Human right defenders also raised question over the sudden war on drugs saying why the government did not take such a violent campaign before to eradicate the drug menace.
“The crackdown against the drug dealers is an ongoing process. The security agencies and narcotics department is carrying out the routine drive round the year,” Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told The New Nation yesterday.
The Home Minister claimed that they have arrested many drug dealers before the beginning of this crackdown. But media did not focused on the development properly.
“Now, we are conducting raids in more organized manner based on a fresh list of drug dealers and drug lords prepared by the government agencies. Our forces have already showed tremendous successes in this regard. The drive will continue until all the drug lords and dealers have been captured,” he added.
Kamal said they have intensified the drive following Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s directive.
“We’ve contained militancy. Now we’ve taken an initiative to save the country from this drug menace,” said Hasina.
She came up with the statement when her government was struggling to contain the drug menace specially “yaba”—a mixture of caffeine and methamphetamine.
Security agencies are facing trouble to stop the drug from passing through Bangladesh’s southeastern border from Myanmar, where much of it produced.
They, however, report seizing a record 40 million “yaba pills” in 2017, of an estimated 250-300 million that entered Bangladesh in a year.
Abdur Rahman Bodi, a lawmaker (Cox’s Bazar- 4) of ruling Awami League, has long been accused of being the key actor in yaba trading from Myanmar through porous border in Teknaf.
The Narcotics Department listed his name as ‘Drug Mafia’ few years back, but the government did not take action against him as he becomes influential inside the ruling party circle. Later it prepared a fresh list of drug lords and dealers dropping Bodi’s name.
“We disapprove of the prevalence of drug in the country. But the way government agencies are combating drug trafficking is not acceptable. The crackdown on narcotics is bringing the rising number of deaths in so called shootout raising concern over human rights violation,” said human right activist Sultana Kamal.
She said, “Those are clearly extrajudicial killings. The government should immediately stop such killings to show respect to the Constitution, rule of law and human rights.”
