4 arrested with Tk 60 crore worth of fake snake venom: RAB

Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB-10) have arrested four people with Tk 60 crore worth of fake cobra snake venom, foreign firearms, and various tools used for fraud.

They were arrested during a raid in Dhaka’s Hatirjhil area on Tuesday night.

The arrestees are Enamul Haque (54), Safiqul Islam (54), Ershad Ali (36) and Syed Mohammad Ibrahim Khalilullah (34).

During the raid, a private car was seized, along with a foreign pistol, a magazine, 6 rounds of ammunition, a toy pistol, 10 kg of fake snake venom, an album, 2 CDs Tk 36,235 in cash and 360 Indian rupees.

RAB claimed that the gang was involved with a international smuggler.

MJ Sohel, Assistant Director (Media) of RAB-4, said on Wednesday afternoon that the fraudsters used a special type of glass container to store the fake snake venom. The labels on these containers have the names and codes of different countries. They collected the venom from different parts of the country and then smuggled it into Bangladesh from different foreign countries.

They were cheating people and extorting millions of taka by selling it to various domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies as well as smuggling it to neighbouring countries through fraud and smuggling.

Various domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies buy this snake venom for millions of taka. Because it costs many times more to legally bring this snake venom from outside the country. Buyers easily fall into the trap of fraudsters due to the low price, added the RAB official.

RAB-10 initially confirmed through forensic experts at RAB headquarters that the snake venom kept in glass bottles is fake and does not have any characteristics of snake venom.

During interrogation, the arrestees told RAB that they collected the fake snake venom from different parts of the country. They then sold it fraudulently to people at Hatirjheel and other parts of the capital. In this way, the gang was embezzling money from various people. They have been handed over to the concerned police station for regular cases, the RAB official also said.