Man willing to surrender killed in ‘gunfight’

Man willing to surrender killed in ‘gunfight’


Much-talked about alleged yaba trade ringleader Saiful Karim was killed in what the police called a gunfight in Naf river port area in the small hours of Friday.

Saiful wanted to surrender to the law enforcement through the persons who facilitated the surrender of 102 drug traders to the police in February, a police source said.

“Police had arrested Saiful when he returned home from abroad after nine months of hiding. He informed us about a large consignment of yaba smuggled in Bangladesh from Myanmar a few days ago,” said Teknaf Model police station officer-in-charge Pradip Kumar Das.

When police went to recover those pills around 12:30am Friday, armed yaba traders launched an attack on them, forcing the police to retaliate, he added.

Following the retreat of the yaba traders, policemen recovered bullet-hit Saiful from the spot and took him to the Teknaf Upazila Health Complex. Physicians there transferred him to Cox’s Bazar District Hospital. But, he died on the way to the hospital.

Cox’s Bazar police superintendent ABM Masud Hossain confirmed the death of Saiful to the newsmen.

The police also claimed that 100,000 yaba pills, 42 rounds of bullets and 33 bullet shells were recovered from the spot.

OC Pradip Kumar also claimed that three policemen of Teknaf station were injured in the gunfight.

Saiful came to limelight as a main perpetrator behind the smuggling in of 1.3 million yaba pills that were recovered from Chattogram’s Halishahar area on 4 April in 2018.

In a confessional statement, Rashid alias Munna and Ashraf Ali, two accused in the smuggling of the huge haul of yaba pills, named Bangladesh’s Saiful Karim and Myanmar’s Abdur Rahim behind the yaba trading.

Chattogram city detective police’s former deputy commissioner Md Shahidullah led the team that recovered the yaba pills. He is now at the district’s counter terrorism unit.

“Saiful Karim smuggled in first consignment of yaba pills in 1997. He is responsible behind yaba addiction of hundreds of thousands of young people in the country,” Shahidullah added.

It has been learnt that Saiful tops the list of narcotic smugglers prepared by the home ministry and second on the Cox’s Bazar’s yaba godfather list.