250 slum families evicted

Public Works Department (PWD) in cooperation with police yesterday evicted some 250 families from a slum at Agargaon in the city by demolishing their houses despite the court order against the drive.
PWD officials and police said the eviction drive was carried out in presence of a magistrate from 12:00pm to 3:00pm and later handed over the land to Export Promotion Bureau (EPB).
Witnesses said at the directives of the staffers from PWD and EPB, several dozens of labourers, in cooperation with 100 policemen, evicted the slum dwellers, knocked down the shanties and other structures with a bulldozer and other equipment.
During the drive, several hundred slum dwellers tried to protest it.
Officer-in-Charge (OC) Reaz Hossain of Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station told The Daily Star: "Police helped implement the government order to hand over the land from PWD to EPB."
The OC said, "Neither anybody from the court nor from the slum came to stop the drive and none could show any court order to stop it."
Barrister Sara Hossain told The Daily Star that Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK) filed a petition with the High Court that on February 4 ordered the government not to evict the people, who had been living there for years, without their rehabilitation.
Talking to this reporter, ASK Executive Director Sultana Kamal said: "Our lawyers rushed to the spot during the eviction and tried to stop it showing the lawyer's certificate against the move, but none showed any honour to it."
"I also tried over a phone to contact the magistrate, but he did not respond to my call," she added.