A mobile court in Abhaynagar, Jashore, found 420.2 tonnes of government urea missing from the stockpiles of a contractor hired by the Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC) to carry it. Abdul Majid, 33, head of the firm's Khulna branch, was fined Tk 500,000 for transporting, selling, smuggling or secretly storing government fertiliser without permission.
Upazila agriculture officer Lovely Khatun, the prosecuting officer in the case, said the raid took place at about 9pm on Sunday, 4 October, at the Shankarpasha ferry ghat on the bank of the Bhairab river, acting on a tip-off.
The two stockpiles of M/s Total Shipping Agency, the government urea carrier, were found to be short by 420.2 tonnes, and Abdul Majid could give the court no satisfactory explanation, she said.
He was fined under the Fertiliser Management Act 2006 (amended 2018) for moving, selling, smuggling or hiding fertiliser elsewhere without a licence, registration, court order or permission, by Abir Ansari, the mobile court magistrate and upazila assistant commissioner (land).
Abir Ansari said on Monday, 5 October, that such drives would continue in the public interest.
Raids on hoarded and smuggled government and subsidised fertiliser have been reported from several districts in recent weeks, some of them on this site. The report is by Banglanews24's district correspondent in Jashore.
Photo: Mar11 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Banglanews24
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