A roads and highways department surveyor was injured after land grabbers attacked him during a drive to evict illegal infrastructures beside the Dhaka-Mymensingh national highway at Sripur in Gazipur on Tuesday.
Following the attack, the department suspended its drive. Before that over 100 illegal infrastructures, including shops, were evicted in the drive led by the department executive magistrate, Ashfaqul Haque.
During the drive, members of police and fire service and civil defence department were present.
Roads and highways department officials said that two hours after the drive started, some local businesspeople led by Azizul Islam started to beat the department鈥檚 surveyor, Rabiul Islam, at about 1:30pm.
They tore his shirt and indiscriminately hit him, they claimed, adding that during the incident, some youths were also seen among the attackers. The officer then took shelter inside a local CNG pump, they said.
Local people alleged that Azizul had continued to grab the department鈥檚 land for long and after grabbing land he constructed different infrastructures at 1no CNB Bazar area before renting these to businesspeople.
The municipality authorities did not pay heed to the repeated complaints from local people against allowing shops in these areas.
However, the roads and highways department made decision to operate the drive.
Azizul claimed that he got the lease of the 1no CNB Bazar area following due procedure after taking part in a tender called by the municipality.
He also said that the businesspeople attacked the surveyor on their own.
The department鈥檚 Gazipur office executive engineer, Shariful Islam, said that he was not present at that place when the incident happened.
鈥榃e will take our next step after watching the video footage,鈥� he said, adding that that they had suspended the drive after the attack.聽
