Cops count coins on drug peddling
Arpara in Jhenidah is conduit for drug supply to southwestern districts, Dhaka
People of Arpara and adjoining areas in Kaliganj upazila in Jhenidah district are paying through the nose as drug traders have ganged up in the village allegedly under police protection and are running their profitable illegal business.
The village is now a wholesale spot from where smuggled phensidyl, heroin and other drugs find their way to Magura, Narail, Kushtia, Chuadanga, Faridpur and even Dhaka.
Movement of school going students has become difficult as traders from different districts throng the village from dawn to dusk, said guardians Shawkat Ali Felu and Mozammel Haq while talking to this correspondent.
Chairman of Kaliganj municipality Mahbubur Rahman expressed grave concern at the rampant drug trading at Arpara village. The issue will be raised at the next law and order committee meeting, he said. Kaliganj police are indifferent to the matter, he told this correspondent.
Some locals alleged that police at Kaliganj thana do not pay any heed when they complain regarding the drug trading.
“It is an open secret that the illegal activity is going on under their protection. Whenever someone approaches them, they appear nonchalant,” complained Waliur Rahman, assistant headmaster of Naldanga Bhusan Pilot High School.
'Hello bhai (brother), come hither, you will get everything to enjoy like bottles of phensidyl, heroine, or hemp at a lesser cost'----it's a common sound to the unknown people who usually go to visit the village.
Whenever the drug sellers of Arpara village come across any new face or stranger, they use the sentence to draw their attention considering them as addicts, locals said.
Investigation by this correspondent revealed that about 675 families out of total 920 in Arpara village are now involved in drug peddling.
Being smuggled through Baghadanga, Jadavpur and Kabilpur borders in Jhenidah, phensidyls and heroin reach drug peddlers in Arpara village and are sold at wholesale prices, locals informed.
Seeking anonymity, some drug traders admitted to this correspondent each of them give Tk 3000 to police per month to run their business. Plainclothes policemen realise the contacted amount from drug sellers, they said.
Farid of Arpara and Shahed Ali of Kashipur villages also help police to realise the contact money from drug sellers, some drug traders said.
“So far as I know 75 per cent of households in Arpara village are involved in drug”, Kaliganj municipal commissioner Shahnaz Parvin told this correspondent.
Heroin peddler Anjuara Begum in the village said, “'We run our business in exchange of monthly allowance to police”.
When contacted, the Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Kaliganj police station Enamul Huq fully expressed his ignorance about the existence of any illegal drug trading in the area.
He also claimed that so far as he knew that
There is no specific spot in Kaliganj where phensidyl or heroin are sold, he claimed.
“If you find such illegal business here, you write it”, the OC said. q
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