BANGLADESH

The Coast Guard and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), in separate raids, seized 125,000 pills of banned but popular club-drug yaba from Teknaf and Ukhia areas.

The seized narcotics are estimated to have a market value of around Tk 57.5 million.

"A Coast Guard unit seized 100,000 yaba pills at Golar Char area near Naf River around 11:30pm on Tuesday, though none could be arrested," Teknaf station coast guard commander lieutenant Mohammad Bodruddoza told .

According to Bodruddoza, the Coast Guard unit chased a suspicious fishing trawler from Myanmar and found the yaba pills hidden in a container.

The Coast Guard personnel seized the boat but failed to detain anyone, the official said.

Bodruddoza estimates the street value of the seized pills around Tk 50 million.

Meanwhile, Cox's Bazaar BGB-17 unit have seized 25,000 yaba pills from the Ukhia area.

The commander of the unit, lieutenant colonel Mohammad Khalequzzaman said the banned drugs were seized from a microbus at Morichya joint check-point on Cox's Bazaar-Teknaf road. They were wrapped in polythene and concealed inside the air-cooler of the vehicle.

The BGB official says the pills have an estimated street value of around Tk 7.5 million.

Though the BGB detained three alleged drug smugglers from the microbus, they refused to give out any names, he said.

A combination of methamphetamine and caffeine, and a popular substitute for the party drug Ecstasy, yaba tablets made its way into Bangladesh's party scene in early 2005. A series of sensational raids in 2007 and media coverage of the issue brought the drugs into limelight that year, leading to calls for strict prevention of its spread.

Methamphetamine, the key component of yaba, is highly addictive and causes withdrawal symptoms such as irritability, insomnia, confusion, tremors, convulsions, anxiety, paranoia, and aggressiveness.