Man held with 17kg gold
Police on Monday morning arrested a man and seized 150 gold bars, weighing 17 kilograms, at the capital's Gabtali.
The arrestee Zahidul Islam alias Zahid, 30, was heading towards Gabtali bus terminal to board on a Jhenidah-bound bus.
Rafiqul Islam, officer-in-charge of Darussalam Police Station, said a team of police intercepted Zahid at a check-post at around 8:15am, following his suspicious movement.
After searching his luggage, police recovered the gold bars worth around Tk 6.45 crore, the OC said.
In preliminary investigation, Zahid claimed himself to be only a carrier of the bars, collected from a man in Paltan.
Zahid confessed that he was carrying the bars to Jhenidah and from there, those would be smuggled to India, Rafiqul said.
As police sought seven days' remand for Zahid after producing him before a Dhaka court yesterday, the court granted only four days.
According to customs officials, gold smuggling in the country has reached an alarming stage as smuggling rackets are using Bangladesh as a transit point.
Moinul Khan, director general of customs intelligence department, told The Daily Star that around 425 kilograms of gold was seized last year while the amount so far this year is nearly 225 kilograms.
Comments