DB arrests 35 from Uttara bar with illegal foreign liquor

The Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) arrested 35 people with a large quantity of illegal foreign liquor in a drive at a bar in the Uttara West area of the capital on Thursday.

Around 6,000 cans of foreign beer and 458 bottles of foreign liquor were recovered from them during the drive, said DMP Additional Commissioner (Detective Branch) Mohammad Harun Or Rashid in a press briefing at the DMP Media Centre Friday.

He said the arrested persons have confessed to being involved in illegal foreign liquor and beer business for a long time. A case has been filed in their name with Uttara West police station. The arrested have been sent to court with a seven-day remand appeal.

The DMP additional commissioner said, "We received information last night (Thursday) that hundreds of raucous boys and girls were having a DJ party in a house on Garib-e-Newaz Avenue, Uttara Sector-13, and a huge volume of liquor was being sold there.

"Earlier, many dignitaries including members of parliament in Uttara complained to us that there was always an anarchic atmosphere in that house," he said.

A number of DB teams went to the house around 9pm and found the place to be very chaotic. On the seventh floor of the house they found many boys and girls in drunken orgies. There was a large stock of foreign liquor and beer. They found a similar situation on the fifth and sixth floors.

The DB officials confiscated all the foreign liquor and beer and asked how this was all brought into the country. They waited till 2am on Friday but the sellers could not produce any document proving they brought it in legally. The detectives arrested 35 employees of the bar.

Asked how the bar operated in that building, Mohammad Harun Or Rashid said, "They operated under the name of Kingfisher Restaurant located in that building. The owner of that bar is a person named Muktar Hossain. He has several other bars in the capital and in Narayanganj."

Responding to the question of how many of Muktar Hossain's bars were licensed, the DB chief said, "The manager of the building we raided told us Muktar operated five bars in different areas including Mirpur, Gulshan, and Narayanganj. We do not know whether they were operating under the same licence or not."

In the preliminary inquiry, the manager also said Muktar previously worked as a waiter at a restaurant called Avillion in Baridhara around 2008. He also worked at Lakeview restaurant in Gulshan-2. From being a waiter, he now owns hundreds of crores of taka. He has houses and cars in the United States and his wife and children live there.