The lead story of a wide circulated vernacular daily yesterday gave a horrifying picture as to how the country's west and south-western border with India is being used as a safe route for smuggling of gold through Bangladesh. The entire region extended over the districts of Kushtia, Chuadanga, Jhinaidaha, Jashore and Satkhira is said to have turned into a safe haven for the smugglers. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that smuggling business of this or that kind has been going on along the country's entire border with India and Myanmar.

According to the lead story of yesterday's Bangladesh Pratidin, international gold smugglers are using Bangladesh as a route for illegal transaction of the precious metal. As smugglers find it difficult to send gold directly to India, they bring the lot first to Bangladesh and then push the same through our porous borders in the said region. The gold that Border Guard Bangladesh confiscates time to time at the border area is only an insignificant part of the huge quantity that is actually sent to the other side of the border.

BGB also arrests large numbers of smugglers now and then but in most of the cases those have been found to be just carriers; by using a long and complicated smuggling chain in which one does not know the others, the masterminds of the illegal business remain out of the reach of the border guards. Alleged involvement of big shots from the political and business circles has made gold smuggling almost unstoppable. The gold smuggling syndicates are so powerful that they even get administrative and law enforcement officials of their liking transferred to the smuggling spots. Many officials entrusted with the task of fighting gold smuggling find it preferable to maintain safe distance from those powerful coteries.

Illegal gold business not only deprives the country of huge amount of revenue annually and makes genuine gold traders suffer, it --- as a crime --- begets other sorts of crimes like illegal arms dealing and clashes over sharing of booties, and even killings, as could be noticed in some recent narratives of the dark world. Gold smuggling must be stopped at any cost before more harm is caused to the economy and people's safety.