Eight truckloads of rice seized

Law enforcers yesterday detained five people, including a food department official, and seized about 170 tonnes of rice stolen from a government silo in Chittagong city.  

Rapid Action Battalion (Rab-7) was still conducting its raids when this report was filed around 9:00pm last night.

The detainees are: Pranayan Chakma, manager of the Central Storage Deport (CSD) in Chittagong's Halisahar, truck drivers Mizan, Shafi Alam, and Md Osman, and a person named Shamsul Huda.

Rab said they were trying to locate Assistant Manager Fakhrul Alam of the silo. They believed Fakhrul was on the run.

Yesterday, Rab-7 seized eight trucks loaded with sacks of rice taken out of the silo, said the unit's commanding officer Lt Col Miftah Uddin Ahmed.

Lt Commander Ashikur Rahman, another officer of Rab-7, said acting on a tip-off the previous night, they conducted drives at different spots in Halishahar area and seized four trucks loaded with stolen rice.

During interrogation, the truck drivers said Pranayan was involved and gave information about the locations of more trucks loaded with the stolen rice, Rab officials said.

Rab-7 raided the Kabir Colony area and seized three more trucks with 1,098 sacks of rice.

A total of 155 tonnes of rice was recovered, said Lt Col Miftah.

Late last night, another truck with 300 more sacks of rice, weighing around 15 tonnes, was seized at a private granary in the City Gate area.

The attempted theft happened at a time when the government was importing rice from Vietnam over the last one week in a desperate move to replenish granaries running low.