The local police station complained that after arresting 3 persons in connection with the cases, they found themselves in an awkward situation because the NHA had not accused anyone by name.

In the meantime, gangs of organised land grabbers have been capitalising on the embarrassment of the police and loopholes in the NHA cases. They have already speeded up their initiatives for selling filled up plots with forged documents.

According to the master plan of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, map no m-77188 designed in 1984 for the huge residential area, the western part of the allotted plots are designated for the main drainage canal and a 60 feet wide ring road from Avenue 3 to road number 33 of Rupnagar.

An engineer of the Dhaka Division-1 of the NHA said that the housing authority would surely have developed more plots if they could have, but unfortunately the design did not leave space for anything except the canal and the ring road.

The canal now aids ground water recharging for the area and without it the whole area could suffer a crisis of water for daily use or during fire accidents in future, he cautioned.

"If the main drainage canal is completely blocked, the sewerage system of the whole area will collapse," he added.

The Dhaka Division-1 of NHA has filed at least 5 cases at Pallabi police station since June 22 for preventing the illegal filling up and unauthorised occupation on the main drainage canal.

Nurul Islam, executive engineer of Dhaka Division-1 said, "We recommended higher authorities to conduct eviction drives against those illegal encroachers to keep the drainage canal free."

Police visited the area and cautioned the related people on the illegal filling up of the canal. Later, 3 persons were arrested from the spot on charges of filling up the canal and occupying public land illegally.

Pallabi police station informed Star City that the NHA had not specified the names of the encroachers, making their cases very weak, and placing the police in an awkward position. "The NHA should mention the names because they know who occupied their land, but they did not mention it in the general dairies," said a station official.

Among the three persons arrested by the police over this issue, Tayab Ali, laboratory in-charge of the National Heart Foundation was one. A spokesman for Pallabi police said that after the arrest of Tayab, the hospital suffered lot and pressure mounted on police to release him. He even denied ownership of land there. "All this confusion happened due to unspecified cases by the NHA. We requested NHA verbally to file general diaries with specific information," he said.

However, since the police cautioned some organised land encroachers at road number 23, 27, 28, the latter have not shown any respite in their activities.

Star City on Thursday found some people filling up the canal in defiance of laws and constructing structures on the filled space as soon as possible. The encroached plots were found to have unsafe and illegal connections for gas, power and water.

After police withdrew from the area, contractors even increased their price for filling up the canal.

While engaged in filling a plot with rubbish, Rana, a construction contractor, told Star City, "The situation is different now. I worked here for lower price but now the owners are in rush so I increased my rate."

Abdul Mannan, owner of such a plot at road number 28 at Rupnagar said, "I have documents with seal and signature of the officials of the housing authority over my right to the land and the government registered them. Now, the housing authority is claiming the land as a sewerage canal. Legal cases are pending. How can the housing authority do this?"