Members of Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP), Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) and Armed Police Battalion (APBN) took positions on the city thoroughfares from evening on December 31, intercepted all mechanised mode of vehicles, especially the private cars, searched them and forced the people inside to go back home.

The law enforcers were found particularly ironhanded in dealing with private cars, auto-rickshaws, microbuses and motorbikes leading to the Patenga Sea Beach. Neither transport nor people was allowed to go the beach area after 6:00pm. Heavy contingent of police, Rab and APBN put up barricades at Barik Building Intersection at Agrabad and Saltgola Crossing at Chittagong Port to bar vehicular movement towards Patenga.

The law enforcers didn't even spare, at some places, rickshaw passengers and pedestrians.

The CMP earlier declared an unofficial ban on the movement of people and transports after 9:00pm on Thirty First night and asked shop-owners, announcing through loudspeakers, to close down shutters.

Some citizens alleged that law enforcers in some occasions '8committed excess' and misbehaved with people in the name of security and maintaining law and order.

"Under what authority or law, police stopped my car on city road and ordered me to go back home after 9:00pm? This is really disgusting," fumed an anonymous businessman, calling to newspaper office yesterday.

Shawkat, a departmental store owner at city's Panchlaish area, said, "I was really shocked in the evening on Thirty First when cops ordered me in a rude voice not to keep the shop open after 9:00pm."

CMP and Rab officials, however, denied the accusation of overstepping and misbehaviour saying that the measures were taken for the greater interest of the citizens.