Hawkers' leader arrested over attack on SCC office

A hawkers' leader was arrested early yesterday on the charge of vandalising the property of Nagar Bhaban, the office of Sylhet City Corporation.

The arrestee, Abdur Rakib, is the president of Sylhet Hawkers' Kalyan Samity and Sylhet Metropolitan Hawkers' League.

He led more than a hundred hawkers to Nagar Bhaban on Monday, vandalised four-five vehicles of the city corporation, and broke glasses of the five-storey building by throwing projectiles.

The attack came following the corporation's instruction to the hawkers to remove their shops from the footpaths, said SCC Mayor Ariful Haque Chowdhury. He said the hawkers also beat up three employees.

The mayor said, “We won't allow hawkers on the footpaths anymore.”

Gousul Hossain, officer-in-charge of Kotwali Police Station, said the hawkers' leader was detained around 1:00am yesterday.

In November last year, he was arrested for illegal occupation of footpaths, but later he secured bail from the High Court, the OC said.

The day after the attack, SCC's legal official Shyamal Ranjan Deb filed a case with the police station accusing Abdur Rakib and a hundred other unidentified hawkers in connection with the attack and vandalism.

According to SCC, there are around 5,000 hawkers' shops on the footpaths in Sylhet city, and around 2,000 of them are located in Bandar Bazar area, the city centre.