A Buddhist monk in Myanmar has been caught with over four million methamphetamine pills.
Channel News Asia reports that the monk, Arsara, was hiding the drugs in his monastery. Police discovered hundreds of thousands of tablets in his car as the monk was driving from Baho village in the town of Maungdaw in Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh.
Arsara is now in custody.
Local police chief Kyaw Mya Win told AFP that “the police found 400,000 drug pills” when they searched his vehicle on Sunday evening.
“The police then went to the monk’s monastery and found another 4.2 million pills.”
Myanmar is notorious for being one of the world’s top narcotics-producing nations. As well as methamphetamines, Myanmar churns out huge quantities of opium and cannabis.
AFP adds that police confiscated a record 98 million stimulant tablets in 2016, nearly double the 50 million seized in 2015. Drug prosecutions also reportedly jumped around 50 percent from 2015 to 13,500. Police said reflected the growth in the local drug trade.
