Police in a raid in the port city of Chittagong have arrested four people and seized a huge amount of raw materials with which the drug peddlers could produce over a million spurious yaba tablets.

With four arrests, the law enforcers seized a total of around 250,000 contraband tablets from a house in Bepariparha under Double Mooring Police Station in the port city, police said.Chalk powder, talcum powder, birth control pills, paracetamol tablets and wax were being used in producing methamphetamine-based tablets.Detective Branch Deputy Commissioner Hasan Mohammad Showkat briefed the media over the raid on Wednesday evening.“We were aware of the locally made yaba pills which were on sale in markets in the port city. The raid was led Tuesday night on a three-storey building in Bepariparha,” said the DC.The raw materials, weighing around 105 kilograms, could produce one million yaba pills, he said.The detainees – Shyamal Majumder, Abdullah Al Aman, Md Mamun Hossain and Ayesha Siddiqa —confessed to operating the factory and producing yaba tablets. They had been in the business for the past three years, he said.They collected the materials from the market and processed them with machines, DB Additional Deputy Commissioner AAM Humayun Kabir told bdnews24.com.Drug peddlers purchased the products at Tk 12-15 per piece and sold them to customers at more than Tk 50 per piece.

Police put on display the cache of contraband Yaba pills and equipment seized from a Yaba manufacturing factory in a raid Chittagong's Bepari Para on Wednesday. Photo: suman babu

Police put on display the equipment used for producing Yaba tablets. The euquipment are seized from a factory in Chittagong on Wednesday when four people are also arrested. Photo: suman babu

Shyamal used to run the factory. Shyamal and Mamun operated the machines, and Aman supplied them to drug peddlers in Dhaka and Chittagong.Ayesha lived in that house with her two children, said Humayun.“They used chalk powder, talcum powder, birth control pills, paracetamol caffeine, glucose, wax and stearic acid to manufacture the tablets,” he said quoting Shyamal.They collected the birth control pills and paracetamol tablets from Dhaka and bought other materials from local shops in the port city, he added.The detainees took the space at a monthly rent of Tk 13,500 seven months ago. Before that, they used to run the factory at another building in the same neighbourhood, according to police.Shyamal was earlier arrested in 2011 and released in 2014.He told journalists that one Rakhal Chandra trained him on making yaba tablets. He and Rakhal were arrested in Chittagong’s Chawkbazar in 2011 with yaba-making materials in his possession. Rakhal died in 2013 in prison.He got back to the business after incurring losses in a sweater manufacturing business.Law enforcers said illegal consignments of yaba, also a sex-stimulating tablet, had been entering Bangladesh via Myanmar border at an alarming rate over the past decade.During flag meetings, Bangladesh has repeatedly urged Myanmar authorities to control the drug smuggling at border points.