New drug 'khat' seized in Dhaka

The seized substance that was brought in as “green tea” through the Dhaka airport. Photo: Collected

A "New Psychoactive Substance" (NPS), or a kind of drug, was seized in Dhaka for the very first time yesterday.

Two stashes totalling 850 kilogrammes each of the substance were brought in under the label of “green tea” a few days ago. The anti-narcotics department seized the first lot of about 466kgs from the Dhaka airport last afternoon, and arrested Md Nazim, 47, from there. Based on his information, another consignment was seized from a warehouse in Shantinagar last night. The consignments were brought under the name of Nawshin Enterprise.

Khorshed Alam, assistant director of Department of Narcotics Control (DNC), Dhaka Metro (North), confirmed the news to The Daily Star, adding that it came from Ethiopia.

The drug, named "khat", is legal in a few countries but is illegal in most others, he said.

A team of DNC headed by Additional Director Nazrul Islam of detective branch of DNC and supervised by DIG Masum Rabbani, director (operations) of DNC, made the hauls.

The arrestee told law enforcers that the drug was brought to the country to ship to the USA, and added that he has already smuggled around 300kgs through Bangladesh, Khorshed Alam told The Daily Star.