Bangladesh News

Land grabbers are now filling up the Gulshan Lake with rubbish brought in by country boats by night to the eastern bank of the Gulshan-Karail part of the fast disappearing lake.
Over the last two weeks, residents along the lake on roads-30, 31, 32 tried in vain to stop several boats coming in the darkness of night from across the Karail T&T slum to dump garbage into the lake to make plots.

The land on the western part of the lake belongs to T&T, where one of the largest slums in the city, the Karail T&T Basti, is situated. Grabbers are eyeing the eastern bank of the lake, where Gulshan residential area is situated.

The nightly lake-filling activities stopped temporarily when a resident of Road 31 filed a general diary with the Gulshan police station on August 17. In the early hours of August 18 Gulshan police seized a country boat red-handed trying to dump earth and rubbish into the lake. The boatman however managed to escape.

Realising that their onslaught on the Gulshan Lake has been detected, the grabbers, two days ago, came with a rickshaw van, laden with earth and ballasts to be dumped into the lake. A resident of road-31 again resisted. The van driver simply ran away leaving behind his three-wheeler. Until 2:00pm yesterday nobody returned to claim the van, now left on the premises of Mahbubul Haque’s lakeside plot.

The empty plot in front of Haque’s home, belonging to one Mujibur Rahman Khan clearly extended the boundary wall into the lake area. Fresh earth filling of the lake was a clear indication that the plot owner was trying to extend the boundary. Khan however told The Daily Star that he has all the documents for his plot.

“I own the plot measuring 8.5 katha allocated by Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) in 1998, I have not extended my boundary and I do not know who is filling up the lake,” Khan added.

More than half a dozen local residents alleged that Abul Kalam Azad, a Rajuk surveyor, has been actively involved in ‘helping the grabbers’. For instance, when Rajuk officials led by Executive Engineer Ujjal Mallick visited the spot yesterday, they spotted the illegal extension of the plot-9 into the lake. Meanwhile, the surveyor Abul Kalam Azad arrived on the spot with Kamal, the caretaker of Khan’s plot, in a taxi. While Rajuk officials asked Kamal to remove the encroachment, Abul Kalam Azad defended Kamal and said plot-9 did not extend its boundary into the lake.

The Rajuk executive engineer said they did not know anything about the filling up of the lake. He said a walkway must be made immediately to demarcate the lake.

“We shall remove the earth from the lake immediately,” said Mallick.

Rajuk official sources said the western side of the lake, at the Karail Basti end, is also being grabbed fast.

“Unless the authorities concerned take urgent steps to demarcate the lake, it is a matter of time when the entire lake will be gone,” said an official source.