Police have filed a case against six named people and five or six others in Lohagara, Chattogram, alleging that they cut a road through a Forest Department SUFAL project plantation to carry sand, slicing into hills and diverting a canal. Sub-inspector Azizul Hakim Liton of Lohagara police station filed the case on the night of Tuesday 3 November under the sand quarry and soil management law.
The site is at Ulubania in Jangal Padua village, Padua union. Those involved fled when they heard of a joint police and Forest Department raid that afternoon, according to the report. Two old shallow machines, an iron pump and cut sections of two suction pipes were seized.
According to the case statement and local people, a group had been lifting sand for a long time from Chapora canal and the adjoining hills. To move it they cut a road through a plantation created under SUFAL in the Hangor forest beat of Padua range, Chattogram South Forest Division.
The Forest Department is said to have closed the road several times with barbed-wire fencing, tree barriers and pits dug by excavator, only for the barriers to be removed and the road reopened. Police and the upazila administration had also stopped the extraction in earlier raids, but it would resume some time after each one.
The case statement says soil removed from the foot of the hills has left large pits and raised the risk of landslides. Residents say the canal's flow and nearby farmland are also being damaged. Padua range officer Md Riadur Rahman Bhuiyan said the accused had damaged forest hills and the SUFAL plantation and reopened the road despite repeated attempts to stop them.
The allegations in the case have yet to be proved in court.
Source: Banglanews24
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