Electrically controlled chamber in covered van to smuggle drug

Detective Branch of Police Monday foiled a drug smuggling attempt where drug was being smuggled into the capital inside a separate chamber set up additionally inside a covered van.

Acting on a tip-off, DB Police beefed up vigilance at entry points to Dhaka. They intercepted a covered van without number-plate at Kadamtali area and started searching it, but did not find anything there.

"Analysing the covered van's space inside and driver's chamber, we suspected anomalies there," Mujib Ahmed Patwari, an assistant commissioner of DB Police's Tejgaon division, told The Business Standard.

He said after further scrutiny, we finally traced a different switch in dash-board of the driver's chamber. By pressing it, a lift-like gate gets opened at the back space of the van from where 24 bags containing 48 kilograms of cannabis were recovered.

DB arrested the covered van driver Sumon Mia and his assistant Rubel Sarker on charges of drug smuggling, he added.

DMP Additional Commissioner for DB AKM Hafiz Akter said that it was unique way of drug smuggling.

"Usually, there are many cases where drugs are smuggled inside tires and some other places of a vehicle, but for the first time, we traced a vehicle with secret separate chamber controlled with switch," he added.

The seized hemps are worth Tk4 crore, said DB officials, adding that the chamber was eight feet in height and nice inches wide where one can carry numbers of bags.

DB Assistant Commissioner Mujib said that the covered van was coming to Dhaka from Brahmanbaria with no other goods inside.

He said the two arrestees during primary interrogation confessed that they were promised Tk25,000 each for carrying the drugs into Dhaka, and they were asked to go to Basila area with the covered van to drop the drugs.

The two were placed on one-day remand each under DB custody after being produced before the court.

Police are now looking to arrest the covered van owner.