- The detained Malaysia Airlines staff with police members and the rescued turtles at Dhaka airport
Three staff members of Malaysia Airlines have been sentenced to imprisonment and charged with fines for their involvement in the smuggling of 30 turtles which were rescued at the airport on Friday night.
The Airport Magistrate’s Court issued the verdict yesterday against Samiur Rahman, 35, assistant station manager, Jewel Ahmed, 29, passenger service specialist, and Mizanur Rahman, 30, baggage handler of the airlines.
Samiur was fined Tk1 lakh, while Jewel and Mizan were both fined Tk1 lakh and sentenced to one year in prison.
The court also asked the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) to conduct a departmental inquiry against absconding scanning operator Md Hasan Parvez for helping the convicts in the crime, said Sharif Md Farhad Hossain, executive magistrate of the court.
Earlier on Friday night, a team of Airport Armed Police Battalion (APBn) recovered 30 turtles from three luggage bags on Departure Belt No 4 at Dhaka airport. All three bags had tags of Malaysia Airlines.
“We contacted the airlines authorities right away and they gave us their passengers’ list, consulting which we identified the owners of the luggage,” said Alamgir Hossain Shimul, senior assistant superintendent of police at the APBn, yesterday.
The three passengers – Rafiqul Alam, Shahin Alam and Salek Mandal – were withdrawn from the flight for interrogation, during which police learnt that none of them were aware their bags carried the turtles, Shimul told the Dhaka Tribune.
“Later, we collected the CCTV footages, which showed that the convicts had put the turtles in those bags with the help of Hasan Pervez, the CAAB scanning operator,” he added.
The recovered turtles were handed over to Forest Department Inspector Ashim Mallick yesterday morning, Shimul said.
Mallick later told reporters that the turtles, identified as Black Chitra turtles, together weighed nearly 85kg and were worth around Tk10.5 lakh. The turtles were later released at Bangabandhu Safari Park in Gazipur, he added.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
