Law enforcement authorities in Bogura intercepted a long-distance passenger bus on Sunday afternoon, arresting a husband and wife who attempted to smuggle a substantial consignment of synthetic drugs while travelling with their forty-five-day-old infant. The operation highlights an increasingly desperate trend among narcotics syndicates exploiting family units to evade routine security checkpoints along major national highways.
The Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) executed the raid around dusk on 25 October along the Dhaka-Rangpur highway near the Noymile Jamalpur area in Bogura’s Shajahanpur upazila. Acting on confidential intelligence, a specialised team led by local DNC officials intercepted an incoming R.K. Travels passenger coach travelling from the capital.
Upon boarding the vehicle, officers focused their attention on seats F-1 and F-2, where the suspects were seated with their newborn child. Investigators noted that the couple lacked standard passenger tickets, a detail that immediately heightened suspicions during the initial inspection. A subsequent thorough body search revealed a sophisticated concealment method. Strips of black adhesive tape secured thirty-nine distinct packets against the lower legs of twenty-five-year-old Mosammat Sarmin Khanam, positioned directly beneath her anklets. Each individual parcel contained two hundred synthetic tablets, yielding a cumulative total of seven thousand and eight hundred Yaba pills weighing approximately seven hundred and eighty grams.
The arrested individuals were identified as Sarmin Khanam and her thirty-one-year-old husband, Sohag Mridha. Official records indicate the couple hails originally from Alfadanga upazila in Faridpur district, though they currently reside in the capital’s Shah Ali police station jurisdiction in Mirpur. Preliminary background checks confirmed that Sohag Mridha already faces multiple pending criminal charges related to previous narcotics offences.
Zillur Rahman, deputy director of the Bogura district DNC office, briefed media personnel late Sunday evening regarding the specifics of the seizure. He detailed how the syndicate attempted to weaponise parental vulnerability by placing narcotics close to a helpless infant, assuming security personnel would hesitate to conduct rigorous physical inspections. Alongside the drug consignment, officers seized two mobile phones and two white anklet accessories utilised to anchor the contraband.
Inspector Md. Shamsul Alam subsequently filed a formal criminal case against the couple at Shajahanpur police station under the stringent provisions of the Narcotics Control Act. The accused were produced before local judicial magistrates on Monday morning as investigators delve deeper into the regional distribution network linked to the shipment.
