Burma’s Border Guard Police (BGP) recently seized a huge volume of yaba tablets from a fishing boat in Arakan State. Many other illegal items were found on the vessel, which was sailing under a Bangladeshi flag.
According to local authorities, a BGP patrol team found the vessel stranded near the beach at Alay Thankyaw Village, a village located on the Burmese side of the Burma-Bangladesh border 10 miles south of Maungdaw District .
During the operation, BGP officers seized over 280,000 yaba tablets ; 80 packages of Nandaw-brand Burmese alcohol; and 1,080 cans of beer from the boat. The contraband items are understood to have a street value of 500 million kyats in Arakan State.
The incident marked the first time that Burma’s BGP has successfully seized such a large volume of illegal drugs in the western Burma this year.
A smaller drug bust occurred on July 9th, when BGP officers seized 100,000 yaba tablets in Buthidaung, another town in on the Burmese side of the border in Arakan State. After confiscating the drugs on the ship, BGP officers arrested two Buddhist Rakhines and one Muslim who were apparently involved in the affair.
Arakan State’s police chief, U Yee Tun Than, informed Narinjara News that over 33 cases relating to drug smuggling have been filed in the first half of 2014, and that most of the yaba tablets seized in Sittwe and Maungdaw were being smuggled from Burma to Bangladesh.
