The High Court issues a rule asking the government to explain in four weeks why it should not be directed to immediately take departmental action against four police officers including the superintendent of Cox’s Bazar police on charge of selling around 10 lakh yaba pills to drug traders.

Drug dealers are now smuggling yaba from Myanmar into Bangladesh through the Indian border with three districts in greater Sylhet using Mizoram, Meghalaya and Assam as the conduit route.

Two alleged drug peddlers and two suspected robbers were killed in separate incidents of “shootouts” in three districts early yesterday.

Farhana Akhtar alias Papia married a drug dealer when she was just a teenager. She learnt the ins and outs of the illicit business pretty soon and expanded its network, especially by recruiting females.

Three more alleged drug peddlers were killed in “gunfights” in Rangpur, Thakurgaon and Dinajpur districts early yesterday amid the ongoing nationwide anti-narcotics drive.

A total of 75 people were arrested by police in separate anti-narcotics drives at Jatrabari and Mirpur area yesterday, increasing the tally of arrests in the drive to around 400 over the last three days.

We are talking about the body counts -- the deaths in “gunfights” in the current anti-drug war. After all, we are now witnessing the bloodiest anti-crime drive with death tolls already surpassing that of the Operation Clean Heart (57 deaths) or even the anti-militant drive after the Gulshan attack (80 deaths).

With the blessing of a top ruling party leader of the upazila and greasing the palms of policemen every month, Sabdul Mondol of Kaliganj in Jhenidah had run the illegal business for the last one decade, said locals and relatives.

It's now a national crisis. The influx of deadly yaba appears to have gone beyond control despite efforts by law enforcement agencies to contain it.

Abir* first tried yaba out of curiosity with one of his neighbours. Eight years later, he is now fully addicted to the drug, having taken it regularly for the past seven years.

It was like wooing customers to have kebab and biriyani at popular Bihari restaurants. Only a few steps into the Camper Bazar, youths in small groups were looking for potential customers, holding packets full of pink tablets.

It's called crazy medicine. Produced in Myanmar, the dangerous drug very easily crosses the border and reaches cities, towns and villages of Bangladesh through various channels -- sometimes in full knowledge of law enforcers. It now seems unstoppable and is poised to cripple the country's biggest hope -- the youth.

The figures are alarming. Every year, an estimated Tk 6,000 crore worth of yaba is sold in the country, which would come to 30 crore pieces of the drug. It is a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Last year, 40 million pills were seized by different agencies, which according to standard calculation is about 10 percent of the total drug that got into the market.

Detectives arrested an assistant sub-inspector of Narayanganj Sadar Model Police Station in possession of 50,000 yaba tablets yesterday, police said.

Around 9:30pm last Saturday, a police team stopped a motorbike in the capital's Palashi Residential Area. Alleged yaba dealers they had arrested earlier told them that a bike, registered in Chittagong, would have yaba pills stashed inside.

The Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) has drafted a law keeping a provision of death penalty for producing or processing more than 200 grams of yaba pills or the same amount of its ingredients.

We are horrified to learn that two members of the Detective Branch (DB) of police have sold off more than 700,000 seized yaba tablets and made a profit of Tk 8 crore! That the very custodians of the law are now increasingly engaged in criminal activities is a very ominous sign for law enforcement in the country. Such acts cannot be tolerated because the illegal yaba trade has been declared the number one problem in narcotics by the government! Reportedly, there are ongoing investigations into the matter.

Saudi law enforcement on Tuesday detained two flight attendants of Biman Bangladesh Airlines from a hotel in Riyadh on charge of

Detectives in Cox's Bazar sold off 7.22 lakh yaba pills they had seized for Tk 8 crore, according to a complaint filed by a sub-inspector.

The High Court directs the government to take effective steps to prevent illegal influx of narcotics including Yaba, cannabis and Phensidyl across the country particularly in bordering districts--Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban through conducting inquiry.