Police arrested a youth with a disability for peddling drugs from West Rampura in the city on Tuesday night.
The arrestee was identified as Rana Howladar (26). He is an autorickshaw driver by profession, with an amputated left arm.
Although he drives an autorickshaw, his main occupation is selling yaba, police said. Driving an autorickshaw helps him deliver consignments of drugs alongside carrying passengers to various places in Dhaka.
Police say no one regarded him with any suspicion as he went about his business due to the amputated hand, which was replaced with a prosthetic, and that rather won him people’s ‘sympathy’. As if having both hands and both feet ever stopped anybody from selling drugs!
In a rather unguarded attack on those with disabilities, the Deputy Commissioner of Tejgaon of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, HM Azimul Islam, said: “This is a new strategy. You know people like that get sympathy from the public. Rana has used that opportunity.”
It’s an outrageous claim for a senior police officer, given how it seeks to demonise a petty drug peddler by seizing upon his disability, but it exposes much in the problematic attitude of the police towards the public they are meant to serve.
Like any drug dealer, Rana may need to hide his wares at times. This is thought to be natural. If for that reason he happens to at times use his prosthetic, as police described, where others may use other means available to them (from previous reports we have the use of socks and shoe-soles), it makes him no worse than any other dealer, and no better either.
But by hammering on (we haven’t included everything he said) about his apparent exploitation of his disability, or how he took advantage of it, or took advantage of the sympathy that “people like that” get, the DC has rather laid bare his own prejudice.
Based on secret information, police arrested Rana from the Omar Ali Lane area of West Rampura under the Hatirjheel police station.
During primary interrogation, Rana revealed that various parts of his body were damaged due to electrocution. Later, the physician amputated the lower part of his left arm. He has been involved in the Yaba business for seven to eight years. A case under the Narcotics Control Act has been filed against him at Hatirjheel police station, the DC added.
Rana has been living in the Mirpur area for quite some time. He got married for the second time seven days ago. He came to visit the Hatirjheel area with his newly married wife from Mirpur on Tuesday night, when police arrested him.