The High Court has rejected a writ petition filed challenging legality of the police's move to collect personal information about tenants from the landlords.
The bench of Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury and Justice Iqbal Kabir passed the order on Sunday morning.
On March 3, Supreme Court lawyer Jyotirmoy Barua filed the petition with the High Court, two days after he sent a legal notice requesting the government to refrain from seeking the information.
According to the constitution, a citizen has every right to maintain secrecy of his/her personal life.
Read More: Police move to collect tenant data challenged
On the other hand, according to section 42 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, every citizen must help the police for government or investigation work. Under this section, police can seek information from anyone and citizens must cooperate. If necessary, the police can also take action under this section.
DMP sources said that the tenants' information would be collected and maintained by the city’s respective police stations and shared through a central DMP database. The information would be stored categorised under respective neighbourhoods.
The initiative to create a tenant database was taken by the DMP Headquarters in the past, but the process did not success then due to several reasons. The move was taken afresh recently after the law enforcers raided two houses in Badda and Mohammadpur areas and found huge explosives in the flats used as militant dens.