A mobile court in the capital has held around 200 pieces of valuable mobile phones which were brought following illegal ways . The phones were sold in different posh markets and shopping malls in the city.
Price of the seized phones is around 10 million in local currency – customs detective and investigation officials confirmed.
Sources from Custom office said that a special raid was conducted in different shopping malls and markets of the city including Bashundhara City and other shopping malls in Dhanmondi to seize smuggled mobile phone sets.
The raid seized high-priced phones like iPhone X, Samsung Galaxy S8, Nokia X3 and BalckBerry among others and the phones were smuggled into the country in different ways.
Most of the phones were smuggled by people returning from abroad. They pretended that they were using the phones and later sold the phones to such exchange shops.
Sources also informed that phone exchanges shops had more such smuggled phones and they failed to show any strong evidence against their import during the raid.
Officials from Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), after analyzing IMEI numbers of seized phones, confirmed that the phones were not registered. The Import Policy 2015 orders to register the phone’s IMEI number with BTRC before importing commercially.
Though iPhone X is not officially launched in Bangladesh and BTRC did not have any registrations of this phone, it is being sold randomly.
Legal measures were underway. And Dhaka Metropolitan Police forces and other BTRC officials were present during the raid.