5 fertiliser dealers jailed for black marketeering

A Bogura court on Saturday sent five fertiliser dealers of Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC) to jail for black marketeering subsidised fertiliser.

The dealers -- Ruhum Amin, from Nandigram upazila, and Mohammad Nawshad, Emdadul Haque, Fazlul Haque and Ahsanul Karim, from Adamdighi upazila of Bogura -- were arrested by Rapid Action Battalion (Rab-12) after 350 sacks (totalling 17,500 kilograms) of subsidised fertiliser were seized from a truck at a check post.

Acting on a tip off, Rab-12 set up the check post on Durgapur road in Kahaloo upazila and seized the truck -- loaded with Muriate of Potash (MOP) and Triple superphosphate (TSP) fertilisers -- around 3:30am on Friday.

Rab later arrested the five criminals after conducting drives at different locations. They later filed a case against the arrestees with Kahaloo Police Station and handed them over to the police. 

Lieutenant Commander Abdullah Al Mamun, company commander of Rab-12, said that the government subsidised fertilisers were allocated for some dealers in Bogura's Adamdighi upazila, but the accused dealers got the fertilizers out of BADC's Shantahar warehouse in Bogura and sold it to other dealers in Nandigram upazila for personal gains. 

Kahaloo Police Station Officer-in-Charge Amber Hossain said after Rab-12 filed the case and handed the accused over to police, the latter sent them to the court on Saturday, when the court ordered to send the accused to jail.