From cricket to narco world

When he was a student, Ershadul Haque Raju, now aged 32, used to play cricket for the Cox's Bazar district team.

After completing his bachelor's degree in business administration, he became a fish farmer in Ukhiya. But, at one point, he turned his legitimate business into a front for yaba trafficking, officials said.

"Ershad had direct links with yaba dealers in Myanmar and used Rohingya refugees to smuggle the pills into the country. Soon, he became a godfathers of yaba trade in Teknaf," Rasheduzzaman, deputy director at the Department of Narcotics Control (DNC), told a press conference yesterday.

DNC officers arrested Ershadul with 33,000 yaba pills in the capital's Uttara early yesterday.

He used to send large stashes of yaba to the capital in trucks loaded with fish and travelled between the city and Cox's Bazar by plane. 

Drug dealers in the city used to buy the pills from him, the officer added.

A DNC officer pretending to be a drug dealer met him on Monday and arrested him along with his wife and an associate.

In a separate incident, police arrested an auto-rickshaw puller named Rana Howladar, 26, for carrying the pills in his prosthetic hand, HM Azimul Haque, deputy commissioner (Tejgaon division) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told a press conference yesterday.

Rana lost his left forearm in an accident years ago and he had been peddling yaba for seven years taking advantage of his prosthetic hand, Azimul added.

A team from Hatirjheel Police Station arrested him on Tuesday night in the Rampura area with 155 pills.

Rana used to sell the pills in different areas, the officer said, adding that police followed him for a while before arresting him.

Rana was previously accused in three cases.