Godfather of highwaymen

In the 1990s, Md Shahed ran a local business in Chattogram with two trucks.

In 2004, the Sylhet native sold the trucks and bought four lorries to transport readymade garment (RMG) products.

Shahed

Soon afterwards, he roped in drivers and helpers, as well as warehouse owners, and formed an organised gang to steal garment products meant for export.

The racket involved taking the shipment to a warehouse, stealing the products and repackaging the cartons before sending them to the port to be exported.

Until 2018, he was personally involved in the thefts. Then he started controlling the racket from behind the scenes and received the maximum share of the sale of the stolen goods.

"Shahed, who goes by the aliases Sayeed and Bodda, has been masterminding the RMG theft for over two decades and now commands a racket of 40-50 members," Khandaker Al Moin, Rab's legal and media wing director, told a press briefing in the capital yesterday.

The gang stole RMG goods from around 2,000 shipments, he said.

Shahed owns two houses in Moulvibazar town worth Tk 15-20 crore. His children live abroad and he has two poultry and a fish farm on 20 acres of land. Currently, he and his associates own 19 lorries, Moin said.

On Friday, Rab arrested four members of the racket including Shahed, in Moulvibazar, Gopalganj and Dhaka.

Rab said a shipment to Brazil was among those from which Shahed's gang stole RMG products.

Garment manufacturer A Plus Sweater Ltd had sent a consignment of sweaters worth over $125,000, packed in 898 cartons to Chattogram Port from its Gazipur factory in eight lorries on October 29 last year, to be shipped to one of Brazil's leading retail brands.

But A Plus Sweaters authorities were dumbfounded after receiving videos from the Brazilian buyer on January 6, which showed that some cartons were completely empty while a substantial amount of goods were missing from many others.

Law enforcers then started conducting an investigation into the theft.

Moin said Shahed is the "godfather" in the RMG theft racket. Most RMG thefts in Bangladesh take place under Shahed's umbrella and with his consent. Shahed is accused in 17-18 cases of RMG theft filed with various police stations.

Trial proceedings of six of the cases are going on, he added.

The racket of 40-50 members includes drivers, helpers, warehouse owners, influential people in the areas where the warehouses are located, porters and a group of labourers, said the Rab official.

The other arrestees are Imarat Hossain Sajal, a stock lot trader of RMG products in the capital's Uttara who bought the stolen goods, and driver Shahjahan and helper Hridoy, who were involved in about a hundred thefts, Rab said.

Moin said the gang members initially developed friendships with drivers and helpers of other lorries involved in transporting RMG goods and encouraged them to steal products.

Before each theft took place, the drivers took samples of the products to determine the potential sale price of the stolen goods. They would carry out the theft only if the value of the loot was estimated to be Tk 12-15 lakh, the Rab official said.

From this amount, the driver got Tk 30,000, the helper Tk 20,000, the warehouse owner Tk 50,000, local influentials Tk 60,000, carton packaging expert Tk 10,000, and other labourers Tk 2,000-3,000 each. The rest of the money was distributed among other groups according to their position, Moin said.

After the driver and helper took the lorries with the RMG products to the designated warehouse, other members of the gang would cut the cartons and take the garment products. They would steal 30-35 percent of the contents of each carton, reseal the carton and quickly load them into a lorries that left for the port.

Later, other members of the gang would store the stolen goods in their own pickups or lorries in another warehouse for a month or one-and-a-half months. When the consignment left the country from the port, they sold the stolen goods to various unscrupulous buying houses, including the one in Uttara in the capital.

Earlier, on December 23, a team of Rab-4 raided a warehouse in Demra and arrested seven members of the gang.

On September 17, 2021, Shahed was arrested for theft of RMG products, which caused a stir among RMG exporters and in media. After his arrest, DMP Additional Commissioner AKM Hafiz Akhter at a press briefing said Shahed was the godfather of highway theft gangs who stole RMG goods from 5,000 consignments.

But, after a few days, Shahed was released on bail and went back to business as usual, Rab said.