Dismissal recommended, 4 DNC men get salary increment freeze

Four Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) personnel who allegedly detained a woman after removing her from a bus and kept her confined in a hotel room overnight have escaped dismissal, despite a departmental probe recommending the severest penalty for their misconduct.

The DNC Headquarters instead imposed a minor punishment on the four – suspension of salary increments for two years – this Sunday, a decision disclosed on Tuesday.

The four are Tayreeful Islam, sub-inspector at the DNC Brahmanbaria district office; Md Kamruzzaman, sub-inspector at the DNC Teknaf Special Zone; Md Asaduzzaman, assistant sub-inspector at the Thakurgaon district office; and Monir Hossain, sepoy at the DNC Bhola district office.

The incident took place on 22 April 2024, when all four were posted at the DNC Cox’s Bazar district office.
According to the probe report, the DNC men stopped a Chattogram-bound passenger bus in Ramu at around 1:30pm and, led by Kamruzzaman, removed a woman from the bus on suspicion that she was carrying narcotics internally.

She was taken to Ramu Sadar Modern Medical and Diagnostic Centre, where a nurse examined her and an X-ray was later conducted. Neither examination found any drugs, the report said.

The woman was then taken to a hotel, where she was kept in a room overnight and released at around 8:00am the following day.

The DNC team neither prepared a futile list – a report required when an operation yields no result – nor recorded the woman’s name and address.

The probe committee also found that no female officer was present during her detention. Moreover, the operation was not entered in the department’s movement register at the time; the entries were made later and filled in retrospectively.

The inquiry further found that Kamruzzaman’s team conducted the operation without informing the relevant senior officers and subsequently concealed it from them, in breach of departmental procedures.

The probe committee found the charge of misconduct only “doubtfully” proven. However, after considering the overall evidence, the DNC leadership initially proposed dismissal from service in June 2026.

The accused challenged the proposed punishment in written replies the following month. The DNC Headquarters described their explanations as “satisfactory” and subsequently reduced the penalty to a two-year suspension of salary increments on 6 September.

Human rights lawyer Advocate Manzil Murshid told the Daily Sun that the DNC personnel had acted in violation of their authority.

Razib Mina, deputy director (admin and finance) of the DNC, told the Daily Sun that the decision against the officers and employee was taken in accordance with the existing Government Service Act and the Government Servants (Discipline and Appeal) Rules.