SKIP TO MAIN CONTENT

Myanmar monk caught with 4.6 million methamphetamine pills

A Buddhist monk in Myanmar has been caught hiding more than four million methamphetamine pills in his monastery, police said on Monday, following a record haul of stimulant seizures last year.

Methamphetamine
File image Methamphetamine Source: Getty Images

2 min read

Published

Updated

Source: AFP


Skip to article content

The monk, named Arsara, is in custody after police discovered hundreds of thousands of the tablets in his car as he was driving from Shwe Baho village in the town of Maungdaw in Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh.

"First the police found 400,000 drug pills" when they searched his vehicle on Sunday evening, local police chief Kyaw Mya Win told AFP.

"The police then went to the monk's monastery and found another 4.2 million pills."

Myanmar is one of the world's top narcotics-producing nations, churning out huge quantities of methamphetamines as well as opium and cannabis.

The meth pills are are hugely popular across Asia among everyone from wealthy clubbers to exhausted blue-collar employees working long shifts.

News that makes sense

Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Last year police confiscated a record 98 million stimulant tablets, nearly double the 50 million seized in 2015.

Drug prosecutions also jumped around 50 percent from 2015 to 13,500, which police said reflected the growth in the local drug trade. 

Trafficking has particularly been on the rise in Rakhine state, home to more than a million people from the impoverished Muslim Rohingya minority.

In September state media reported that two men had been arrested after 6.2 million methamphetamine tablets were found in their car in Maungdaw.


Get SBS News straight to your inbox

Sign up now for daily news from Australia and around the world. You can also subscribe to Insight's weekly newsletter for in-depth features and first-person stories.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Follow SBS News

Download our apps

Listen to our podcasts

Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service

Stream now

Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world