The Rapid Action Battalilion or RAB has arrested Abdur Rahman Badi, former member of parliament of Cox`s Bazar-4 (Ukhia-Teknaf) constituency.
He was arrested from Panchlaish police station area of Chittagong on Tuesday night, said RAB`s law and media wing assistant director Imran Hossain..
RAB has said that Abdur Rahman Badi, known as `Yaba Godfather`, has been arrested in the case of an attempted murder in Cox`s Bazar`s Teknaf upazila.
Badi is a two-time MP who was denied nomination further by the Awami League in the December 2018 controversial elections amid widespread criticism over his activities, including alleged link with smuggling of Yaba.
The Awami League, however, fielded his wife Shaheen Akhter Chowdhury for the election.
A Chittagong court in September 2020 him with making illegal wealth.
In November 3, 2016, Badi was sent to jail after a special judge court in Dhaka sentenced him for three years for hiding information in a financial affidavit submitted to the ACC in a case filed by the corruption watchdog in 2014.
ACC deputy director Khairul Huda filed the case against Badi on August 21, 2014 with Ramna Police Station after investigating an abnormal increase in his wealth based on the affidavits he submitted to the Election Commission before the 9th and 10th parliamentary elections.
Earlier, a Department of Narcotics Control list in January 2014 confirmed that Badi was the ‘person in control’ of a principal entry point of Yaba consignment.
Apart from naming 10 people, including his brother, several in-laws, uncle and nephew, the DNC list said that many other people worked under Badi in the illegal drug trade.
The former MP, honoured for being the highest taxpayer of Cox’s Bazar in 2014, was also named in a Department of Narcotics Control list of suspected Yaba trade ringleaders, according to sources in law enforcement agencies.
Badi captured newspaper headlines several times for assaulting school teachers, forest and bank officers, engineers, a freedom fighter and a lawyer, just to name a few.
Badi started politics in 1991. After failing to secure nomination from the BNP, he joined the Awami League the same year.
In 2003, he was elected chairman of Teknaf Municipality from the AL.
Badi was arrested during the 2007-08 military-backed caretaker government’s tenure, but was later released. He became an MP for the first time in 2008 on the AL ticket and then again in 2014.
He had at least 23 cases filed against him at different times .He faces numerous allegations of land grabbing, smuggling and extortion.
