HC orders to submit list of railway land grabbers

Staff Reporter  :
The High Court on Tuesday ordered the concerned bodies of the government to prepare a list of the persons who have illegally occupied railways’ land in different districts of the country and submit it in the court within 30 days.

Railways Secretary and Director General of the Bangladesh Railway have been asked to comply with the direction. They have also been asked to inform the court about how much land of the railways are under illegal occupation in different districts by the same time.

The High Court bench of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Justice Khizir Hayat passed the order after hearing a writ petition filed by rights organization ‘Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh (HRPB)’.

Lawyer Manzill Murshid appeared in the court hearing on behalf of the HRPB, while Deputy Attorney General Md Saifuddin Khaled represented the state.
The court also issued a rule asking the respondents to explain in two weeks as to why their inaction to recover the railways’ properties from illegal encroachment across the country should not be declared illegal.

It also wanted to know in the rule as to why the respondents should not be directed to evict the illegal occupants of railways’ properties in different districts of the country.
Railways Secretary, and Bangladesh Railway’s Director General, Director and Assistant Land Properties Officer have been asked to comply with the rule within two weeks.
In the hearing, the lawyer said that in 2016, after filing a writ petition seeking HC directives to evict the illegal occupants of the railways site in Narayanganj, more reports were published in different media that hundreds of acres of land were illegally occupied in different districts including Sirajganj, Bogura and Pabna.
He further said with the connivance of some unscrupulous employees of the railway authorities, thousands of acres of properties, which are essentially public properties, have been encroached and court’s directions are needed to recover them.

If the court does not intervene, it will not be possible to recover these properties of the people, added the lawyer.