Cocaine haul raises transit route concerns

A Guyanese national was arrested with around 8.6kg of cocaine at Dhaka airport yesterday, and officials said the drug was not meant for local use.

They added that since the cocaine use is almost nonexistent here, Bangladesh may be a transit point for the drug trafficking.

The Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate (CIID) seized the consignment, the largest in recent times, and detained the Guyanese citizen, Karen Petula Stuffle, at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

She arrived in Dhaka from Doha around 2:00am. During a search, the CIID officials found the cocaine in 22 large capsule-shaped objects hidden inside her luggage.

The value of the contraband is estimated to be Tk 130 crore, said CIID Director General Mohammad Neazur Rahman while talking to reporters at his office.

The woman travelled to Doha from Brazil and then to Bangladesh, he said, adding that she was convicted in her country for carrying cocaine earlier.

She posed as a tourist to avoid drawing the attention of law enforcers. She had a plan to stay in Bangladesh for about a month and then smuggle the drug to another country, said Department of Narcotics Control (DNC), CIID, and police officials who interrogated her.

In the past, most of the cocaine consignments seized in Bangladesh were traced back to South America and their destinations were Europe and North American countries, according to police and officials of the DNC.

Cocaine is produced mainly in South American countries and international drug traffickers have been using Bangladesh and other countries as a route to smuggle cocaine to Europe, North America, and sometimes to India for years, they said.

Police and DNC officials said around 30kg of cocaine was seized in Bangladesh over the last five to six years, including 13kg haul in 2023.

In January last year, a Malawian woman, Nomthandazo Towera Soko, 35, was arrested with around 8.3kg of the drug at the airport.

Later, at least seven others from Malawi, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Bangladesh were arrested in this connection, but the ringleader, a Nigerian national, is still at large.

The contraband item is usually smuggled into the country via air. In some cases, law enforcers and DNC officials carried out drives and seized the items after they had been smuggled out of the airport, said officials.

Talking to The Daily Star, Khurshid Alam, deputy director (intelligence) of DNC, said cocaine is produced mostly in Peru and Colombia and the smugglers use Bangladesh as a transit point to smuggle the drug to other countries.

"We did not find anyone in the country's rehabilitation centres who had become addicted to cocaine."

"We found a few cases, possibly one or two, who became addicted to cocaine abroad. They returned home later and were admitted to rehabilitation centres here to recover, as they couldn't find the drug in the country."

Bashir Uddin, director (operations) of DNC, told this newspaper that they would investigate whether any Bangladeshis are involved in the racket.