A TV journalist was arrested with 40,000 pieces of Yaba tablets worth around Tk 1.20 crore in Chittagong city yesterday.
Officials of the Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) arrested Mohammad Selim, 32, a Cox’s Bazar correspondent of private television channel Gazi TV, and his wife Khaleda Akther Munni, 27, while they were carrying a consignment of the contraband in a microbus.
The tablets were found hidden inside four bags of children’s blanket in the vehicle, DNC officials said.
The couple rented a microbus for Tk 20,000 to carry the tablets from Cox’s Bazar to Dhaka and pasted the stickers of “Gtv” and “Press” on the front and back of the vehicle so that they could evade law enforcers’, they added.
On a tip-off, a team of DNC officials intercepted the vehicle on Marine Drive Road in Fishery Ghat area of the city around 12:20pm, said Ibrahim Khan, inspector of (Kotwali Circle) DNC Chittagong metro sub-zone, who led the drive.
When the officials approached Selim, he identified himself as the district correspondent of GTV and said he was going to Dhaka for work-related reasons. When the officials insisted on searching the vehicle, he did not resist, Ibrahim added.
The officials also found Tk 1.20 lakh along with the tablets, he said.
Although Selim initially denied any involvement, he gave in in the face of repeated grilling by the DNC officials. He also admitted that he had transported such consignments before and the latest one, of 50,000 Yaba tablets, was done in a similar manner around a week ago, said the DNC inspector.
Talking to journalists at the DNC office, Selim and his wife, however, claimed that they did not know anything about the tablets and that the tablets were there in the hired microbus before they got on it. They, however, could not tell why they pasted the stickers on the vehicle.
The process of filing a case under the Narcotic’s Control Act with Kotwali Police station was underway, said DNC Chittagong metro sub zone Deputy Director Ali Aslam Hossain.
