Person detained with 4,500 yaba tablets is not Jamaat’s upazila ameer
A video circulating on the social media platform Facebook shows a Coast Guard member searching a bearded man dressed in a white cap and panjabi, pulling packets of yaba out from inside his pajama trousers. The video is being shared with the claim that the Bangladesh Coast Guard has caught the ameer of an upazila unit of Jamaat with yaba. However, Dismislab’s verification found that the detained individual has no connection to Jamaat. He is Hafez Ullah, a relative of Abdur Rahman Badi — a former Member of Parliament and expelled leader of the Teknaf upazila unit of the now-banned Awami League.
In some posts, he is described as being from Jashore, in others from Chattogram, and in others, he is simply called a leader of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami with no specific location mentioned.
On July 25, a video was posted from a Facebook profile with the caption, “The ameer of the upazila Jamaat from Jashore-6 constituency [used] strategically smuggling 45,000 yaba, or crores of taka worth of yaba, inside his pants, beneath his penis. He was later caught by the Bangladesh Coast Guard in Inani, Teknaf.. These are the people who go to parliament and speak against drugs, and these same people smuggle yaba beneath their penis… Now you have proof that they are traders in religion,” (verbatim). As of the time this report was published, the video had been viewed more than 23,000 times and shared more than 150 times.
The same video, with the same caption, was posted on a Facebook page named Ziar Soinik (“Zia’s Soldier”). As of the time this report was published, that video had been viewed more than 100,000 times and shared over 1,500 times.
The video was also found posted on several other Facebook pages and profiles (1, 2 , 3 , 4 ) with the claim that “the upazila ameer of Jamaat has been detained.”
In the course of the investigation, a reverse image search of keyframes from the video located footage of the same scene in a report published by Chattogram 24, the regional Facebook page of Channel 24. The description accompanying that report read, “As soon as the pajama’s tie was untied, 4,500 yaba emerged!” Text within the video itself read, “Was formerly an Awami League leader, now runs a yaba business!”
To learn further details, Dismislab located multiple reports using relevant keywords. A report published by the news agency UNB on July 25 carried the headline, “Teknaf Upazila Awami League leader detained with 4,500 yaba.” The face of the person in the photograph published with the report matches the face of the person in the circulating video.
The report stated, “Lieutenant Commander Mukit said that, acting on confidential information, the Coast Guard station in Inani conducted a special operation in the area. During the operation, a passenger bus traveling from Teknaf toward Cox’s Bazar was stopped and searched. Four thousand five hundred pieces of yaba were recovered from a suspicious individual on the bus.”
A report published by Banglanews24 stated, “The Coast Guard has detained an upazila Awami League leader, Hafiz Ullah, with 4,500 yaba at Inani Beach in Cox’s Bazar. The detained Hafiz Ullah, 66, is a resident of Dailpara, Ward No. 3, Teknaf Sadar Union. He was the former organizing secretary of the Teknaf upazila Awami League. He had previously been expelled from the party after also being detained with yaba.”
A report in the daily Prothom Alo stated that the individual detained on July 24 is named Md Hafez Ullah. He is the husband of the paternal cousin of Abdur Rahman Badi, a former Member of Parliament from the Awami League. It further stated that the detained individual had held the position of former organizing secretary of the Teknaf upazila Awami League.
That is to say, the person detained in the video is not a Jamaat leader. He is Hafez Ullah, a close relative of Abdur Rahman Badi — a former Member of Parliament and expelled leader of the Teknaf upazila unit of the now-banned Awami League.
All social media captions, quotations, and news excerpts in this article have been translated into English from the languages in which they were originally posted or published.
