Members of the Armed Police Battalion (APBn) arrested six members of a Rohingya family with 6,275 pieces of Yaba pills at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) in Dhaka on Thursday.
The arrestees are Rubel, 15, his maternal aunt Aasia Begum, 25, paternal aunt Zohura Begum, 30, and Aasia Begum's husband Ali Ahmed, 28, her seven-month-old son Umair Hossain, and Zahura’s 10-month-old daughter Umme Salma.
Mohammad Ziaul Hoque, additional superintendent of the APBn (airport), confirmed the development, saying that the Rohingya family came here from Cox’s Bazar by a flight of Novo Air on Thursday evening.
Suspecting their movement, intelligence of the battalion questioned their identity and Yaba pills, but they posed them as Bangladeshi nationals and denied having the Yaba, he said.
The presence of the Yaba pills was detected in their stomachs through tests at a clinic in Uttara. Later the tablets were recovered from the stomachs of Rubel, Aasia and Zohura at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, the APBn officer said.
The arrestees are residents of Leda Camp in Cox’s Bazar and were displaced from Myanmar in the face of a crackdown by the Army there in 2017.
A case was filed accusing the Rohingya nationals with Airport police station in this connection.