Nearly 1m cubic feet hill razed in Satkania

Large-scale hill razing is underway to fill up land to construct a building for a proposed college in Chattogram's Satkania upazila.

Such razing has been going on with excavators for the last two months in Puranghor area under union-14.

A total of 9,00,000 cubic feet of hill has been flattened, said Zamir Hossen, deputy director of Department of Environment (DoE), Chattogram.

Anyone will be distraught by the extent of the hill cutting, he said, adding that they found four people involved in the razing after visiting the spot.

"We are readying the damage assessment. Then we will serve them with a notice," he said.

The four accused owned the hill but cannot raze those without the prior permission of the DoE. They damaged the ecological balance there, he added.

Mohammad Nur-E-Alam, upazila nirbahi officer of Satkania, told The Daily Star that assistant commissioner (land) of his upazila, first came across the hill razing. On June 25, he seized an excavator after labourers, who were engaged in hill cutting, fled the scene.

Rased Hossen Shikdar, former chairman of Puranghor Union Parishad and one of the accused in a DoE report, told this newspaper that union parishad chairman Mahbubur Rahman Sikdar asked them to donate their land for the college and they did so.

"The land we owned was a hillock. They [the UP chairman] cut it to expand the college premise," he said.

Similar comment came from another accused Shahed Hossain.

Puranghor Union Parishad chairman Mahbubur Rahman Sikdar said he doesn't know who cut the hills.

"I am just involved in the college building initiativelike many others. Someone took the job to give the college earth in filling up the low land. But who razed the hill is unknown to us," he said.

Zamir Hossen, deputy director of DoE, said they already recommended the DoE director to summon the four.