Satkhira Land Grabbing
Munda community losing homesteads
Our Correspondent, SatkhiraThe Munda community in Kashipur of Shyamnagar upazila in Satkhira sent copies a letter to the Anti-corruption Commission, intelligence agencies and joint forces asking for their help in preventing influential land grabbers taking away their ancestral homesteads.
In the latter, around 300 indigenous people of 46 families alleged that influential land grabbers have been torturing them, threatening them with death and implicating them in false cases filed with Shyamnagar Police Station.
They said the land grabbers are hatching conspiracy to create panic among the people of Munda community. "Over 29 Munda families were compelled to leave their ancestral lands and take shelter at another place," they said.
They said one Kamrul Islam of Iswaripur in Shyamnagar has been pumping in saline water from the river into his shrimp enclosure set up around Kashipur destroying arable land so that the Munda community cannot cultivate their lands.
Moreover, Kamrul and his gang are not only torturing the indigenous people but also harassing them by implicating them in false cases in a bid to compel them to leave the area, they added.
They said Kamrul's younger brother Monzur Rahi, son-in-law of former Jamaat-e-Islami lawmaker Gazi Nazrul Islam, and his gang attacked the indigenous people on April 17 last year that left 12 people of the community injured.
The gang also chopped down trees on their lands and cut open an embankment that ruined the water of their pond with saline water, they alleged. They said they had filed cases with a police station but no action was taken against the criminals.
They sought intervention of the law enforcers to ensure the security of the Munda people's lives and properties and demanded immediate arrest and exemplary punishment to the culprits.
On contact, Monzur Rahi and Kamrul Islam denied the allegations and claimed that a section of people are hatching conspiracy against them to tarnish their image in society.
Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/04/06/d70406012821.htm