Out of 60,000 acres of forestland under it, the department admits losing ownership of as much as 12,000 acres to land-grabbers that include some influential people.

But other sources said the encroachment scene was much worse than that, with up to 30,000 acres falling into the hands of about 11,400 grabbers.

Sources said legal disputes over ownership of vast swathes of the forest in Gazipur and Savar dragged on for years with as many as 173 cases pending with the court.

"We were under the impression that the forest department owned 60,000 acres, but now we find the amount is actually much less than that. The land has gradually slipped out of our control through skewed land surveys over the years in favour of the encroachers," said Akbar Hossain, divisional forest officer (DFO) of Dhaka division.

He expressed his resolve to free the land from encroachers. "We are very serious about it," he told The Daily Star.

The forestland in Dhaka division stretching from Gazipur to Savar once abundantly grew Shal trees and was rich in wildlife including birds.

Now the landscape on way to Gazipur and Sreepur is practically barren as encroachers have cut down thousands of trees to turn the forest into farmland. Also, housing and business establishments and a large number of factories have been set up in the area.

Most of the encroachments have occurred in Gazipur. Since the Liberation War, locals and also influential people from the capital obtained land registration under their names by hook or by crook. Even some ministers reportedly took out lease on the forestland.

But forest officials did not care and many received kickbacks for aiding and abetting the fraud.

Asking not to be named, a former chief conservator of forest told The Daily Star of a widespread fraudulent practice grabbers have employed for years in collusion with dishonest forest officials to encroach upon forest land.

The grabbers first obtain fake land ownership documents by bribing forest officials. Then they have their accomplices file court cases to claim ownership of the same land. Once the court rules, the property goes to either party, creating a legal impediment to the forest department's land reclamation initiatives, he said.

The condition is so bad that the forest department now owns only 527 acres out of 900 acres of land under Savar police station.

"Since independence, we haven't had any office in Savar. Now it is very difficult to identify our land there as we were unable to keep track of it over this long period of time," Akbar said.

The government leased out some of the forestland to various organisations including the army, Ansar force, Bangladesh Radio and the central jail. Some former district commissioners (DCs) of Gazipur also leased out some lands recorded under their names (the Gazipur DC office) to individuals and organisations.

The forest department alleged the Jamuna Group fraudulently acquired five acres of forestland in Shafipur of Gazipur in 2002 to expand its liquor factory that was originally on an adjacent piece of land.

They said the Jamuna Group first asked for permission to build a 120-foot-long and 20-foot-wide approach road to the factory, but later produced a paper showing purchase of the five acres from local owners. A court injunction is now in place after the forest department filed a case against them.

Shajahan Siraj, environment and forest minister, told The Daily Star that land-grabbing began ever since the land ministry allocated the 60,000 acres to the forest department in 1953 through a gazette notification.

He said the government formulated a land recovery project but was forced to put off its land reclamation drives for the time being because of fund constraints.

Forest department sources told The Daily Star of an ongoing land survey in nine out of 222 moujas to identify its land.

The department has given details of the encroached land to a high-powered committee comprising secretaries of different ministries, the sources added.