BANGLADESH police have arrested an alleged human trafficker and intercepted two Rohingya refugees preparing to board a boat heading for Malaysia, officials said today.

Police acting on a tip-off raided a home near the coastal town of Teknaf in southeastern Bangladesh, where five people had assembled ahead of a promised voyage across the Bay of Bengal.

Two Rohingya Muslims, both men, were among the group.

The pair had arrived from Myanmar since August, when a surge of violence in Rakhine state forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya across the border.

The other three would-be passengers were Bangladeshis, another police officer said.

“They were herded there as part of an effort to take them to Malaysia. They said they would be taken there by sea,” Teknaf police chief Main Uddin told AFP.

“Among the five, there were two Rohingya men, who had already paid 10,000 taka (RM490) each. The arrested person is being charged with human trafficking.”

The would-be passengers told police that they had promised to pay the alleged trafficker, a Bangladeshi, another 200,000 taka each upon arrival in Malaysia.

Since August, nearly 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled a military operation in Myanmar’s westernmost Rakhine state, described by the United Nations and the US as “ethnic cleansing”.

Bangladesh authorities worry that many refugees may risk travelling to Southeast Asia by boat, a route once popular among Rohingya seeking economic opportunities outside the grim, long-standing camps in Cox’s Bazar.

People smugglers, in recent years, have sent tens of thousands of Rohingya from Bangladesh to Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country in Southeast Asia, usually between November and March, when the seas are calmest. – AFP, December 15, 2017.