Heroin Smuggling: BD Foods chairman on fresh remand

Court Correspondent

A Dhaka court yesterday placed BD Foods Chairman Badruddoza Chowdhury Momen, arrested on charge of smuggling heroin to the UK, on a fresh five-day remand.

Metropolitan Magistrate Mohammad Shafique Anwar passed the order against the prayer of an eight-day remand when the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of police produced him before the court on completion of his seven-day remand.

Badruddoza was arrested on May 14 after Nazmul Haider Bulbul, a former BD Foods official, and his cohort Mokhlesur Rahman Nayan, a cargo handler, confessed to a magistrate that they smuggled 22.5kg heroin to the UK at Badruddoza's directive.

In his forwarding report, the investigation officer (IO) CID Inspector Nurul Islam said that Badruddoza admitted to have smuggled illegal goods to the UK by hiding those inside the legitimate exported goods. He also admitted that his former official Nazmul Haider Bulbul's confessional statement is true.

The IO mentioned that Badruddoza started his export oriented-business with Tk 20,000 to 40,000 in 1985, but managed to earn crores of taka within a short time. Moreover, Abul Kalam, a UK citizen of Bangladeshi origin as well as a buyer of BD Foods, owes Tk 2 crore to Badruddoza.

So, Badruddoza needs to be quizzed further to find out the source of his large amount of money, whereabouts of his business partners, other spots of collecting heroin and names of his foreign buyers, the IO added.

The defence lawyers submitted a petition for cancellation of the remand prayer.

Remand of Mainuddin

BD Foods Limited manager Mohammad Mainuddin, arrested on charge of smuggling 54 kg heroin, was placed on a five-day remand to find out more information about smuggling drugs to the UK.

The IO CID Inspector Abdur Razzak produced Mainuddin before another court on completion of his three-day remand and sought for a fresh 10-day remand.

Kazi Zafar Reza, proprietor of Rainbow Enterprise, and Abul Bashar, owner of Green Haven Enterprise had earlier given confessional statements about drug smuggling to a magistrate on different dates.