Mohammad Jamil Khan

Rafat Chowdhury, son of Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Shafiqur Rahman, is the Sylhet regional coordinator of Al-Qaeda-inspired militant outfit Ansar Al Islam and has been inspiring youths to leave their homes for so-called jihad, claimed police yesterday.

The transnational trafficking syndicate that operates Libya’s “game ghar”, an establishment where migrants are tortured and extorted, has at least 40 agents in different areas of Bangladesh.

They call it the “game ghar (house)”.

With at least seven Rohingyas, including three of the community leaders killed last month, police have started a combing operation to bring back peace in Cox’s Bazar refugee camps. So far, at least 75 Rohingyas have been arrested in the drive called “Operation Root Out” that started on October 29. But why did law and order deteriorate there in the first place? What should be the next steps? In an interview, Maj Gen ANM Muniruzzaman (retd), president of Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies, shared his views about the issue with The Daily Star yesterday.

The men on the ground, the Armed Police Battalion (APBn) members, have time and again stated that after every incident of violent crime in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya camps, the refugees point to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa).

Amid the armed conflicts along the border over the last two months, gang members living in the no-man’s-land entered Bangladesh and engaged in criminal activities, including murders, at the refugee camps, police and locals said.

As drives to clamp down on narcotics trade intensify, drug dealers are developing innovative techniques and finding new routes to dodge arrest.

Rohingya crime gangs have resorted to murder, abduction and extortion to establish their supremacy at Cox’s Bazar refugee camps and control drug trades.

An Indian company sold virtual poker chips in Bangladesh and took the lion’s share of Tk 168 crore out of the country, a CTTC investigation found.

There have been conflicts on the Myanmar side over the last two months with sounds of heavy gunfire and mortal shelling sending a wave of panic across the border into Bangladesh. But it has hardly created any impact on the yaba smuggling.

Drug traffickers posing as fishermen are smuggling in stashes of yaba pills from Myanmar through the Naf river in Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, amid lax enforcement of a ban on fishing in the river, according to several intelligence officials and men involved in the trade.

To change their fortunes, three Bangladeshis went abroad, after handing over all their savings to a transnational trafficking syndicate.

A transnational syndicate is using a new land route through Myanmar to traffic people, mostly Rohingyas from refugee camps in Bangladesh, to Thailand and Malaysia.

It only costs Tk 2,000 to get the username and password of an administrator of the Surokkha website/app, which is used to register for Covid jabs and verify vaccination status.

Amid allegations of bias, the Election Commission yesterday asked the deputy commissioners and superintendents of police to perform their election duties impartially.

Seven years ago, Mohammad Sabuj and his neighbour Mohiuddin Sarkar from Cumilla’s Daudkandi paid around Tk 13 lakh to six people who lured them with well-paying jobs in Germany. 

Shah Azam, 28, a yaba godfather of Teknaf, surrendered to police on February 16, 2019, promising to leave the drug business and never engage in the trade again. He was sent to jail at the time and released in November 2020.

To collect funds, increase organisational strength, and avoid arrest, Al-Qaeda-inspired militant outfit Ansar Al Islam is now sending its permanent members abroad.

Ansar al Islam, which claims to be the Bangladesh chapter of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, has received about Tk 1.5 crore in the last three and half years from people in the UK and Australia for its operational activities as the militant outfit looks to stage a comeback.

A government employee, schoolteachers, doctors and imams were found to have links with seven youths who ran away from their Cumilla homes last month, said CTTC and Rab officials.