The ongoing drive by the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) against illegal establishments was suspended when a man—identifying himself as a leader of Bangladesh Chhatra League—and his aides obstructed the crackdown on Tuesday.
A group of young men led by Asaduzzaman Talukder Labu—the self-proclaimed Kalkini Municipal unit Madaripur Chhatra League president—obstructed the drive when it started taking down a housing project of Amin & Momin Developments Ltd in Basila, Dhaka.
BIWTA Executive Magistrate Mostafizur Rahman said he ordered Labu be detained for obstructing government activities, which caused his cohorts to flee the scene.
He said: “Following the incident, the drive came to a halt for nearly an hour.
“But, Labu was finally released on bond.”
"Establishments of the housing project were partially knocked down during the drive but the drive resumed on Wednesday morning, with the demarcation of the project," he added.
Previously, two executives of the real estate company, accused of land grabbing on the riverbank, were arrested on February 14.
Meanwhile, BIWTA Joint Director AKM Arif Hossain, who is leading the drive against the encroachment on the Buriganga and Turag rivers, was summoned to his office during the crackdown.
The Dhaka Tribune repeatedly tried to contact him via the phone but was unable to reach him.
Adding to the situation, Arif had been updating information about the drive on his Facebook profile for the last three weeks, but did not so on Wednesday.
When asked if the BIWTA official was withdrawn from his duty due to "pressure" from a certain quarter, BIWTA’s outgoing chairman, Commodore Mohammad Mozammel Haque, said they summoned him for an unavoidable situation.
“I am not aware of such a thing [of Arif’s withdrawal]. Who ordered this?” he replied.
Mozammel went on saying that they backtracked from knocking down a 10-storey building on the bank of the Turag River since it is under the jurisdiction of Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha.
According to him, on Tuesday, at least 20 illegal structures were demolished on the banks of Buriganga and Turag rivers, raising the number of the demolished establishments to 1,640.
Previously, on February 13, BIWTA was forced to suspend its drive while demolishing a two-storey building owned by the father-in-law of Anti-Corruption Commission lawyer, Mosharraf Hossain Kazol.
On February 5, the BIWTA drive dismantled several semi-concrete structures owned by Haji Mohammad Selim, Awami League lawmaker from the Dhaka 7 constituency.
The crackdown on illegal establishments started on January 29, and is supposed to end on Wednesday.