The Bangladesh authority has detained 214 Bangladesh and 6 Myanmar nationals from a Malaysia-bound trawler in the Bay of Bengal, said a report published in The Daily Star, a popular English daily from Dhaka.
Quoting the Bangladesh officials, the report said that members of Bangladesh Coast Guard on Monday detained 220 people including six Myanmarese from the trawler after seizing it, some five kilometers off the Saint Martin’s Island under Teknaf in Cox’sbazar district of Bangladesh.
The patrol team of Bangladesh Coast Guard seized the trawler with suspicion, said Saint Martin’s Coast Guard Station Commander MA Newaz.
The station commander Newaz also disclosed that the detainees had confessed about their destination as being Malaysia, though they did not have legal documents.
The detainees were scheduled to be handed over on Tuesday, as the weather was not favourable on Monday, informed Mohammad Farhad, officer-in-charge of Teknaf Police Station.
A gang of human traffickers normally organize people from Bangladesh and Myanmar and keep them in different areas of Teknaf to send them to Malaysia through the sea regularly, said the coast guard officials.
Meanwhile, the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) has detained 14 people including an alleged trafficker from Whykang check post in Teknaf Townahip on July 6. The BGB members also detained nine other people including three alleged traffickers from the same check post on the previous day.
