Farmers angry at not getting fertiliser attacked a sub-assistant agriculture officer in Ghogadaha union of Kurigram Sadar on Sunday, 20 September. The assault took place around noon in front of a dealer's warehouse near the union parishad office, with several police officers present; the officer, hurt on the head, back and nose, ran to a local trader's house for shelter.

The upazila executive officer, the upazila agriculture officer and the officer-in-charge of Sadar police station reached the spot and restored order, after which the fertiliser in the warehouse was distributed to the waiting farmers. The agriculture department is serving a show-cause notice on Olil Molla, proprietor of the dealership M/S Olil Molla, for failing to open the warehouse at the appointed time; he could not be reached for comment.

The officer, Mamun Or Rashid, was posted a month ago as block supervisor for wards 7, 8 and 9 of the union. He said 120 sacks were due to be distributed from the dealer's warehouse from the morning, that the dealer did not open despite repeated calls, and that the waiting farmers grew furious and, around noon, some rushed at him thinking he was the dealer and beat him before he understood what was happening. His glasses broke and cut his nose; the police present, he said, did not come to his aid.

Union parishad chairman Abdul Malek said the union does need fertiliser, but the number of people turning up for it was suspicious and it should be checked whether outsiders in the crowd had incited the attack; farmers do not yet know the new block supervisors. Sadar upazila agriculture officer Nahida Afrin said a copy of the dealer's notice would go to the district fertiliser and seed monitoring committee and that video was being examined to identify the attackers.

On demand, Afrin said the aman crop does not need fertiliser now; because there was no flood, some late aman was planted on low riverside land, creating some demand, for which an extra allocation was made — but ordinary people were gathering alongside farmers, and those who needed 10 kg were demanding a full sack. Sadar police OC Kamal Hossain said three policemen could not protect the officer from a crowd of hundreds and that action would follow a complaint from the agriculture department.

It is the district's third major fertiliser incident: on 7 September farmers broke into the M/S Mita-Hasan Enterprise warehouse at Roumari and took more than a hundred sacks, and on 23 August they broke open a dealer's store at Dhaldanga bazar in Bhurungamari and took 197 sacks of urea, alleging an artificial shortage and overpricing. The report is by Bangla Tribune's Kurigram correspondent.

Source: Bangla Tribune