Mobile phones used for networking frontier underworld of smugglers

Bangladeshi mobile-phone networks are allegedly being used as key communication tools for growing smuggling and crimes, intelligence sources said.
They said by using such mobile networks, a large number of unregistered SIM cards from several operators are being used in some areas across the borders in smuggling arms, and narcotic yaba tablets and phensedyl syrup.
According to law-enforcement agencies concerned, there are about 0.15 million of Bangladeshi mobile-phone SIM cards allegedly being used in criminal activities from border areas of Indian frontier states and Myanmar's Arakan region.
Every month, they said, a large number of Bangladeshi mobile SIMs are being smuggled to the neighbouring countries as mobile networks are available 10km into areas across the frontiers.
Detective Branch (DB) of the police said that every day illegal yaba tablets and phensedyl worth more than one billion taka are entering the country through the use of Bangladeshi mobile networks linking border areas of the neighbouring counties.
"The local and international smugglers, including the citizens of India and Myanmar, are allegedly using Bangladeshi mobile networks to set up communications with the global criminals to push illegal arms, yaba tablets, phensedyl etc, which is becoming a threat to the country," special superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Ashraful Islam told the FE.
He said the unregistered SIM cards of the phone companies operating in Bangladesh are being used across the borders for the smuggling of arms, yaba and phensedyl.
An official of Cox's Bazar district DB police, requesting anonymity, said that the frequency of many of mobile towers in Teknaf upazila can also be got in Myanmar.
"We have seized nearly 1.5 million pieces of yaba in last twelve months," he said.
Asked about the phoning in the underworld, Sarwar Alam, secretary of Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC), said that the commission has strict rules and regulations governing the setting of up mobile tower.  "One of the major conditions on setting up a mobile tower is that its frequency cannot be used in other countries," he said.
He urged the law-enforcement agencies, specially the Border Guard of Bangladesh (BGB), Police, RAB and Coastguard to inform about such towers.
"We will take stern action against companies who are owners of such towers," he added.
A high official at Robi Axiata Limited, one of the leading telecom operators, said: "It is not possible to stop the network in border areas of our neighbouring countries."
He said if the country's mobile-phone operators want to stop the network in border areas of different countries, the Bangladesh citizens in many frontier areas would not get the mobile network as the geographical locations are not linear ones. The state agencies seized a total of 2.8 million pieces of yaba tablets in 2013 against 1.9 million recorded in 2012.
The law-enforcing departments in the first six months of this calendar year (January-June) have netted some 1.7 million pieces of yaba tablets-amid a sort of invasion by drug lords.
The number of seized yaba tablets was only 0.12 million in 2009, 0.81 million in 2010 and 1.3 million in 2011, showing the rise in a crescendo.