Fresh attack on housing project at ECB Chattar, 14 arrested; case filed against owner instead

A housing project called New Guinea Properties in the ECB Chattar area of Cantonment in the capital was attacked, vandalised and fought over again on Saturday afternoon. Police arrested 14 people in the incident, including 10 men and 4 women. But after the incident, a case was filed against the owner of the housing project instead.

The project's owner, Md Nazim Uddin Bhuiyan, said on Sunday, "I was not at the scene, yet a case was filed naming me as an accused. The police said nothing at the time. When I went to file a case, the police told me to drop a few names. So I did not file a case."

Md Nazim Uddin Bhuiyan said police showed those arrested from the scene as arrested under Section 151 and sent them to court.

Cantonment police station officer-in-charge Gias Uddin said a man named Nur Mohammad has filed a case as plaintiff against 12 people, including the project's owner Nazim Uddin.

The OC added that Nazim Uddin had come to the police station to file a case, but he wanted to name as an accused a person who was not present at the scene during the attack. As senior officers did not agree, he left without filing a case.

Police sources said there is a land ownership dispute between Nazim Uddin Bhuiyan and the case's plaintiff, Nur Mohammad.

CCTV footage showed a group of youths attacking a gate inside the New Guinea Properties project on Saturday afternoon. They then went inside and vandalised various structures.

Nazim Uddin Bhuiyan alleged that the accused, freed on bail after the earlier attack, hired criminals to carry out this fresh attack on his project.

Earlier, on the night of 26 September, the same project was also attacked, vandalised and looted. At that time the studio of popular content creator Salman Muktadir, located there, was also vandalised and looted. A video posted by Salman Muktadir about the incident sparked widespread discussion on social media.

Investigation sources said Dhaka Metropolitan Detective Police (DB) has still not been able to arrest Md Juboraj, identified as one of the "coordinators" of the 26 September attack. Juboraj is known as a member of the group of Md Ibrahim, alias "Killer" Ibrahim, convener of Mirpur's Bhashantek police station BNP.

Investigation sources said that on that day, 13 people sat at a food shop in ECB Chattar and planned the attack. The case's accused number one, Shahriar Mahmud, then made a deal worth one crore taka with Ibrahim to carry out the attack. Ibrahim later gathered people and gave Juboraj the responsibility for the attack.

So far, 11 people have been arrested on charges of planning and directly taking part in the 26 September attack. Eight of them have already been released on bail.

Investigation sources said nine more people involved in that attack have been identified, and operations to arrest them are ongoing.