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Police in Bangladesh have arrested a Rohingya man with $5m of methamphetamine pills in their biggest narcotics haul this year, according to officials.
Special police staged a raid on a beach in the Cox’s Bazar district on the border with Myanmar on Sunday following a tip that a trawler carrying the drugs would land there, a spokesman said on Monday.
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The spokesman said 800,000 pills were found in sacks in the trawler and one Rohingya suspect was detained while several others escaped.
About 740,000 Rohingya arrived in Bangladesh after a Myanmar military crackdown in August 2017 and drug dealing has become a growing problem in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar where they live.
The seizure was the biggest made this year of the methamphetamine pills, known as yaba, which have become a popular drug among young people in the nation of 168 million.
Since a crackdown was launched last year, more than 500 suspected drug traffickers – including at least 25 Rohingya – have been shot dead by police and security forces.
