Looting of paddy protested
A Correspondent, Bhola
About 480 landless destitute families living on a 11- kilometre flood protection embankment in Char Manika union of Charfassion upazila protested against repression on them recently. They also protested looting of their newly-harvested paddy on 60 acres of their land by musclemen of local influentials. They lodged their protest before a group of journalists who visited the area. They told the visiting newsmen that they had been living on the embankment for over a decade. under the Embankment Protection and Maintenance Project of a local NGO. They took lease of about 350 acres of land from the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) authorities and cultivated transplanted aman there. Musclemen of local influentials known as jotdars was pressing them for eviction from the area for a long time. Even they made fake documents and filed 11 false cases against the destitute families. For this reason they looted their aman paddy on 60 acres of land and tortured them, they alleged. The destitutes also hold a rally which was chaired by a destitute housewife named Sorfuja Khatun recently.
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