Four arrested with 1,950 yaba pills in separate raids in the capital, a couple among those held

The Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) has arrested four people with 1,950 yaba pills in two separate raids in the capital. Md Anwar Hossain, deputy director of the DNC's Dhaka Metro (South) office, disclosed the information on Tuesday (October 20).

He said the arrests were made on Monday (October 19) in raids in the Kuratoli and Mirpur-1 areas, and that separate cases have been filed over the two incidents.

According to DNC sources, a couple was arrested with 1,600 yaba pills in a raid on a house next to the Kuratoli Purba Para Jame Mosque in Khilkhet.

The arrested couple are Md Jewel Rana and his wife Hasna Akter. They were tenants of a room in that house, and their permanent home is in Mymensingh district.

According to the department, the couple had been running the yaba trade in collusion with each other, operating out of the rented home, as the raid findings suggested.

On the same day, another raid was carried out on the road in front of a shop named Bismillah Banijya Bhandar at the Shah Ali Mazar Bestoni Project Market in Mirpur-1.

In that raid, Mousumi Begum and Md Amir Hamza Noor were arrested with 350 yaba pills. Both of them are from Barguna, the DNC said.

The total haul from the two raids stood at 1,950 pills — the bulk of it, 1,600 pills, recovered from the rented home in Kuratoli.

Deputy Director Md Anwar Hossain said separate cases have been filed over the two incidents, so the four arrestees will face legal proceedings under those cases.

The presence of the yaba trade both in a rented home in a residential area and on a market road in the capital underlines the need to keep anti-narcotics drives going.