Six held with fake currency in Bangladesh linked to human trafficking

By

Sheuli Akter

Bangladesh’s anti-crime elite force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has detained six people including a Pakistani citizen on charges of making fake foreign currency and having involvement with human smuggling.

RAB personnel made the arrest in different areas of Dhaka on Thursday night and early Friday morning.

10 million fake Indian rupees, 624,000 taka, a substantial amount of U.S dollars, Pakistani rupees, UAE dirhams, Saudi riyals, 28 Pakistani and Bangladeshi passports and a large number of official seals of different high officials and seal making equipment were all recovered from them.

RAB Spokesnan Mufti Mahmud Khan on Friday told journalists about the arrest.

He stated that RAB has so far this year arrested 1,700 people with fake currencies and 165 people involved with human trafficking.

According to sources, a syndicate comprising of people from Bangladesh and its neighboring countries has long been involved in trafficking people from Bangladesh.

According to a report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released in May this year, some 25,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshis boarded smugglers’ boats on the Bay of Bengal between January and March of 2015, nearly doubling the number during the same time last year.

Sheuli Akter

Sheuli Akter, from Bangladesh, is a Special Correspondent and Editor of NsNewsWire, (Bangladesh’s First Press Newswire).  Previously she had worked for Bangladesh’ top news agency, United News of Bangladesh (UNB) and top newspaper (now defunct) The Bangladesh Observer. She also gained an honourable mention in the first ever World Media Summit WMS Awards for ‘Exemplary News Professionals in Developing Countries’, receiving the award in Beijing in January 2015.