Special police staged raid on a beach in Cox’s Bazar following tip that trawler carrying drugs would land there.

Police in Bangladesh have arrested a Rohingya man with $5m of methamphetamine pills in their biggest narcotics haul this year, according to officials.

Special police staged a raid on a beach in the Cox’s Bazar district on the border with Myanmar on Sunday following a tip that a trawler carrying the drugs would land there, a spokesman said on Monday.

The spokesman said 800,000 pills were found in sacks in the trawler and one Rohingya suspect was detained while several others escaped.

About 740,000 Rohingya arrived in Bangladesh after a Myanmar military crackdown in August 2017 and drug dealing has become a growing problem in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar where they live.

The seizure was the biggest made this year of the methamphetamine pills, known as yaba, which have become a popular drug among young people in the nation of 168 million.

Since a crackdown was launched last year, more than 500 suspected drug traffickers – including at least 25 Rohingya – have been shot dead by police and security forces.