The Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) was forced to stop the drive against illegal establishments on the Buriganga and its banks nearly for around one and a half hours on Wednesday.
A high official of the BIWTA said they suspended the drive for at least 90 minutes when they approached to knock down a two-storeyed building owned by the father-in-law of Anti-Corruption Commission lawyer, Mosharraf Hossain Kazol.
Requesting anonymity, the BIWTA official said: “Kazol made us stop the drive and we were receiving phone calls from different quarters, with the callers asking us not to demolish the building at the Jhawchar area in Kamrangirchar.”
When contacted, the lawyer said that his in-laws did not get any prior notice on the government action and that the house was part of a 10.5-katha land at Lobon Factory lane in the area, along the Buriganga.
“My father-in-law Hazi Jan-E-Alam had bought the land back in 1961 and it was under his occupation since then, before the drive was carried out,” he said.
According to the lawyer for the anti-graft watchdog, the land is at least 20 feet away from the river demarcation pillars, clearly showing that “the land was not illegally occupied.”
The removal of the building and the occupation of the land caused his in-laws to incur a Tk1 crore loss, said Kazol.
The house was among 11 two-storeyed buildings torn down on Wednesday. The BIWTA authorities also demolished another 113 illegal structures on the banks of Buriganga River, raising the number of such establishments to 1,441 since January 29.
The Dhaka Tribune also contacted Shipping Secretary Md Abdus Samad, who was present during the drive, regarding the development, but he claimed to have no knowledge of it.
Until Wednesday, some 14 acres of land have been reclaimed through the drive which will be resumed from 9am on Thursday covering the areas from Jhawchar to Basila, the BIWTA authorities said.
The crackdown on river encroachment intensified following the February 2 directive of the High Court on river safety.
As of February 10, the BIWTA installed 4,063 demarcation pillars on the banks of Buriganga River.
Meanwhile, the BIWTA and the other relevant authorities including the Dhaka South City Corporation are soon going to hold a meeting to decide on 46 religious establishments along the banks of the rivers in and around Dhaka, Narayanganj and Tongi.
Before the crackdown on land grabbers and river polluters, the government evicted 12,863 illegal structures, recovering 512.62 acres of land in Dhaka and Narayanganj from 2010 to January 26 last.