Most of the house owners in the port city are not scrutinising information while renting out the houses to tenants.
Taking advantage of the situation, banned militant outfits are carrying out their activities providing false information to house owners.
The security analysts observe that renting out houses without verifying identity of tenants might pose a serious security threat.
Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) officials said they had repeatedly urged house owners not to rent out their houses to any suspicious person and requested every house owner to provide all necessary information about their tenants to the nearby police station.
The house owners do not bother about background of tenants and remain satisfied only with receiving house rent on a regular basis. However, high-ups of the CMP warned landlords, saying that they would be stern in dealing with this particular issue so that the militants could not take shelter in any house concealing their real identities.
The police on Sunday busted a hideout and nabbed three members of banned militant Islamic outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh from city’s Aman Bazar area under Hathazari upazila in Chittagong.
An MK-11 sniper rifle, 250 rounds of bullets, 12 sets of army uniforms along with a major rank badge, nameplates, two magazines, around five KG power gel, 10 detonators, a huge amount of bomb making materials were also seized from den of two-storey building.
“A man identified himself as ‘Nafiz’ had rented the house seven months ago at Tk6,000. Nafiz said that he ran business in Dhaka and Chittagong. He had moved in with his wife and one-year old child. The house had been without occupants for the last one month, but Nafiz turned up two weeks ago to pay off the rent,” said Hazi Ishaque, landlord who lives on the first floor of the building.
“Fardin, chief of JMB in Chittagong, rented the house five to six months ago introducing him as Nafis and a businessman. However, he used the house for depositing arms and ammunitions and coordinating the JMB’s root-level activists, said Babul Akhtar, CMP additional deputy commissioner (Detective Branch), adding that they could not arrest Chittagong JMB chief Fardin alias Nafiz.
The police arrested five militants of the banned militant outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and recovered nine hand grenades, a pistol, 120 rounds of bullets, 10 knives and bomb making materials during a raid in the city on October 5. The law enforcers arrested militants after conducting a raid at a ground-floor flat of a five-storey building at Khowaj Nagar area under Karnaphuli police station in the city.
On February 28 this year, the RAB-7 had seized a huge cache of explosives and bombs from a militant hide-out at a five-storey building at Halishahar area in the city. The elite force at that time also arrested three militants from the building. The residents of the building at that time said that the trio had taken shelter on rent only one month ago.
“We have issued a circular about keeping record of identities of the tenants. We have also requested landlords to submit their tenants’ National Identity Cards to the nearby police stations. It is a matter of great regret that the landlords did not comply with our request,” said Moktar Ahmed, CMP deputy commissioner (Detective Branch), adding that they have also distributed leaflets, pasted posters and campaigned through loudspeakers in this respect.
“The landlords should not rent out their houses to anyone without verifying the identity. The National Identity Cards of the tenants should be submitted to the nearest police station. The landlords should also install CCTV cameras on the premises of their house,” said Major (Retd) Emdadul Haque, a security analyst.
