DHAKA: Growing numbers of outcast Rohingya refugees are risking their lives by crossing the closed Myanmar-Bangladesh border with narcotics pills packed into their stomachs, police said Tuesday.

Scores of Rohingya Muslims, including many women, who fled to camps in Bangladesh after a Myanmar military clampdown in 2017, have been detained in recent months after returning to seek drugs and transport them, according to police.
Narcotics control official Soman Mondol said an anti-drug squad had arrested 18 Rohingya near the border town of Teknaf on one day this month and 13 had ‘yaba’ methamphetamine pills in their stomach.

Myanmar has become a major producer of yaba — a Thai word meaning « crazy medicine » — which has become wildly popular in Bangladesh, as well as other southeast Asian nations.

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