Narayanganj Mayor Ivy spends night at police station to get contractor released

Narayanganj City Corporation Mayor Selina Hayat Ivy has spent a whole night at a police station to ‘protest’ the arrest of a city corporation contractor.

Police arrested Zakir Hossain, owner of Ratna Enterprise, around 10pm on Wednesday. Ivy rushed to Narayanganj Sadar Model Police Station about an hour later and stayed there until Thursday morning.

Hossain was implementing a project to build an amusement park and beautify a lake at the city’s Gymkhana Deobhog area.

"Influential quarters had him arrested in a false case to foil the project," she claimed.

OC Abdul Malek, however, said Hossain was arrested in a case filed on Wednesday over an incident of beating up some staff of Bangladesh Railway.

The contractor was accused of beating up and injuring some railway staff with seven to eight unidentified people on Mar 27, the OC said.

“No such incident took place. I contacted the railway secretary. He told me that he knew nothing about any such incident,” said Ivy.

The city corporation had awarded the contract for implementing the project on railway land and there was a dispute over this.

“The contractor was working on the city corporation’s directives. If anyone has a complaint, I should be arrested first,” said the mayor.

Ratna Enterprise got the contract for the Tk 77.5 million project in August last year. The project is scheduled to be completed by August this year.