2 'top human traffickers' arrested
Police yesterday arrested two alleged top human traffickers in Teknaf upazila of Cox's Bazar.
Abdul Kalam, 32, and Zamal Uddin, 33, -- two brothers -- were picked up from their home at Katabuniya village in coastal Sabrang union around 3:45am, police said.
The duo, who stand accused in 12 cases filed in connection with human trafficking, were on the run for a long time, said Shyamol Kumar Nath, superintendent of police in Cox's Bazar.
“The two siblings are not only top-listed human traffickers, they are also known as 'dons',” Teknaf Police Station Officer-in-Charge Ataur Rahman told our Cox's Bazar correspondent.
Katabuniya is locally known as “Malaysia Airport” for the fact that it is the hub of human traffickers, and acts as a gateway to get into rickety boats sailing for Malaysia via Thailand.
Though human trafficking through the Bay of Bengal has been going on for the last few years, the issue came to the fore following Thailand's discovery of mass graves in its southern hilly jungles.
According to survivors, traffickers first take the people to Thai jungles where they hold them hostage and realise ransoms from their families before pushing them into Malaysia.
Since May 1, Thailand had exhumed 36 bodies while Malaysia exhumed 130 bodies from jungle camps in their territories. The bodies were thought to be either of Bangladeshis and/or persecuted Rohingyas of Myanmar.
The UNHCR says between January 2014 and June 2015, approximately 94,000 refugees and migrants departed from Bangladesh and/or Myanmar. Of those, 31,000 left in first six months of this year.
Of them, the UN Refugee Agency estimates that over 1,100 people (Bangladeshis and/or Rohingyas) died in the sea between January 2014 and June 2015.
Additionally, there were reports of drowning while disembarking, and many remained missing, the UNHCR said in a quarterly report of April to June.
Following the regional migrant crisis, three suspected human traffickers were killed in “shootouts” with police in Cox's Bazar, while several others were arrested.
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