Ruling Khulna MP's son using boundary wall to 'grab a family land'

The son of a ruling party MP in Khulna has allegedly erected boundary walls around a family land in an attempt to grab it.

The eldest son of Paikgachha MP Nurul Haque, however, refuted the allegation saying that “he purchased the land and is its rightful owner".

The alleged victim of Monirul Islam’s action is no other than Abdul Aziz Goldar, General Secretary of Ward No 4 Awami League of Paikgachha Municipality.

The family members of Aziz are now using a ladder or a tunnel-like passage underneath the wall to move in and out of their house.

“We are under a virtual siege. We have been living here for the last seven decades. We have deeds for 20 decimals of land while we are using another 30 decimals of government under verbal permission from the Upazila administration,” Aziz said.

“But now, Monirul Islam, son of Khulna-6 (Paikgachha) MP Nurul Haque, has constructed the boundary wall around all the 50 decimals of land claiming he has purchased the land,” he added.

“We are now being asked to leave our home,” Aziz told bdnews24.com.

Aziz said a nephew of Nurul Haque filed an extortion case against 16 members of his family on Jan 3 this year.

“The male members of the family went into hiding to avoid arrests. Monirul took the opportunity and erected the wall on Jan 5. The case is nothing but a harassment for us,” Aziz said.

“We came back to the locality after around a week. Police arrested us, and we had to stay in jail for 26 days.”

“We also have filed two cases against 17 people with Monirul as main accused – one for vandalising the homestead and another for making the threat to kill us.”

Aziz had sought the prime minister’s intervention to save his ancestral land.

Refuting the allegation, Monirul said the owners of the 50 decimals land were Thakur Das Haldar and his brother Ajit Haldar.

“We purchased the land in December 2015 with Tk 500,000,” he claimed. He alleged Aziz is the ‘illegal occupant’ of the land.

“We constructed the wall to protect our land,” he said adding “there is a small gate on the wall which they can use.”

MP Nurul Haque said as a lawyer, he checked all the land deeds and gave his son the go-ahead to buy the land.

Municipality Mayor Selim Jahangir said, “We knew that Das brothers were the owner of the land. They left the county but came once after independence. What happened since then, I don’t know.”

According to Ward-4 councillor SM Taibur Rahman, there were several attempts at a settlement of the dispute, but those failed