Extortion Cases Against 81: No arrest made

Police were yet to arrest any of the 81 people who were accused in three cases on Thursday for allegedly extorting money from hawkers in Gulistan and some other areas of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC).

However, hawker leaders feared that some of them might be arrested in the cases in a bid to foil their anti-eviction movement.

Shamsul Alam, assistant estate officer of the DSCC, filed the cases with Paltan, Motijheel and Shahbagh police stations.

Officer-in-Charge Abu Bakar Siddique of Shahbagh Police Station said they were investigating the matter.

“We were verifying the names to identify the accused,” he told The Daily Star.

Mayor Sayeed Khokon of DSCC said crores of extortion money was behind the hawker's anti-eviction movement.

Some “big fishes” were backing the movement and they would try to foil the corporation's initiative to keep the footpaths free, he added.

Khokon said those involved in the movement were also associated with extortion and were violating a High Court order.

According to him, the number of hawkers in the DSCC area is about 15,000, including around 3,000 to 3,500 in Gulistan.

The DSCC was planning to arrange rehabilitation for hawkers. It was trying to manage jobs for them at different projects of the Local Government Division, the mayor told The Daily Star.

The corporation was also trying to help hawkers obtain microcredit loans from the government so that they can run small businesses in rural areas, he added.

Arif Chowdhury, president of Jatiya Hawkers Federation, said they initially felt relief to know that the DSCC was taking actions against extortionists, but later they heard that hawker leaders were accused in three cases “to foil the anti-eviction movement”.

He said they had been continuing the movement demanding rehabilitation of hawkers.

Rafiqul Islam, general secretary of the federation, on Thursday said they had been demanding action against the “linemen”.

A “lineman” collects Tk 50 to Tk 300 from a hawker every day on behalf of some “police officials, local goons and political leaders”, he alleged.

Despite repeated attempts, the authorities failed to evict hawkers from footpaths, as they managed to continue their business by paying “extortion money”, according to newspaper reports.

Hawker leaders said there were around 3.5 lakh shops on the city's footpaths, and they pay Tk 3 crore a day as “extortion money”.