Detective police arrested three members of the Pakistan-based militant outfit Tehrek-e-Taliban from Dhaka’s Segunbagicha on Jan 20, 2014.

An anti-terrorism case was started against the three Pakistani citizens — Mehmud, Osman and Fakhrul Hassan, who had no valid documents for entering Bangladesh.

The same year, an Algerian citizen was arrested for raping and killing a Bangladeshi school student in the capital’s Uttara while in July 2015, a Korean citizen carrying drugs was arrested by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). 

In November 2016, four Nigerian citizens were arrested by RAB from Uttara for being instrumental in an SMS-based lottery scam and in May this year, two Africans were arrested in Gazipur with counterfeit currency.

These are just a few examples of foreigners involved in crime. There are around 100 cases against foreigners in Bangladesh with more than twenty thousand complaints.

It’s believed that foreigners are behind syndicated crime in four cities — Dhaka, Narayanganj, Gazipur and Chattogram (Chittagong).

Citizens of 22 nations are involved in criminal activities in the country—India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Japan, Spain, Germany, Peru, Taiwan, Myanamr, Philippines, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, China, Nigeria, Sudan, Ghana, Congo, Tanzania, Uganda and Cameroon.

The foreigners living in the city and involved in illegal activities change their addresses frequently. Reportedly, many have thrown away their passports and are using forged Bangladeshi passports and national IDs.

Experts feel that foreigners entering Bangladesh are not being monitored by law enforcers or the immigration department.

 “Most of the people involved in criminal activities belong to African and South-east Asian nations,” said Dhaka University Criminology department Chairman Dr Zia Rahman.

They are behind drugs, prostitution and human trafficking, he said before adding, “The immigration system has to be vigilant to keep track of foreigners who enter Bangladesh.”

Additional Inspector General Sohel Rana, based in the police headquarters, said: “We always maintain vigilance over the activities of foreigners and efforts are underway to arrest those involved in crime.”

According to the home ministry, a total of 474 foreigners are held in prisons across Bangladesh.

Most foreigners, who were found to have been involved in criminal activities, engaged mostly in radicalism, pornography, gold smuggling, cyber scams, blackmail by posting photoshopped images, arms trade, human trafficking, prostitution, drugs, ATM card fraud, foreign citizenship scam, illegal VOIP and abduction.