The Coast Guard has detained seven men, along with a dredger and a bulkhead, for illegally extracting sand from the Tetulia river in Borhanuddin upazila of Bhola district. Lieutenant Commander Sabbir Alam Sujan, the Coast Guard's media officer, confirmed the operation on Friday morning, 18 September.

He said that, acting on a tip-off, a Coast Guard team raided the Tetulia near Hanser Char in the upazila at about 10 am on Thursday, 17 September, caught the seven in the act of lifting sand and seized the dredger and the bulkhead. A mobile court led by an executive magistrate of Bhola then fined the seven a total of Tk 1 lakh, which was deposited in the state treasury, and released them on bond.

Three of the detainees were on the dredger: Md Jahangir (22), Md Mehedi Hasan (22) and Md Nur Alam (18). The other four, on the bulkhead, were Abdul Baset (45), Md Sumon (20), Md Numan (18) and Md Jasim Howlader (45). All seven are residents of different parts of Bhola and Barishal.

The seized dredger and bulkhead remain in Coast Guard custody. Orders have been given to auction both within 15 working days and deposit the proceeds in the government treasury.

Lieutenant Commander Sabbir Alam Sujan said illegal sand extraction from rivers was worsening riverbank erosion and putting the cropland and homesteads of riverside communities at risk, and that the Coast Guard would keep up such operations to protect them.

For farmers on Bhola's chars the significance of the raid is not the sand or the size of the fine but the riverbank. Unregulated dredging in a river like the Tetulia hastens bank collapse, and the first thing erosion takes is the farmland along the water. With the Coast Guard itself drawing that link, enforcement against sand mining is now also a question of protecting agricultural land.

Source: banglanews24