Single tenants alarmed as raids on messes go on
Things were going well for Mohammad Mohsin, a private university student, until police raided his mess at the city's Farmgate a few days ago.
The happy-go-lucky youth was attending classes and spending quality time with friends.
But after the police raid, a fear of police harassment and a feeling of getting evicted haunt Mohsin.
“A few days ago, police came to our building and instructed our landlord to collect our information although we have already submitted our bio-data to him. Now he wants us to leave the house as soon as possible,” Mohsin told The Daily Star on Thursday.
Worried sick, his parents asked him to return home in Rangpur to avoid police harassment.
A sense of panic has gripped thousands of single tenants like Mohsin living at several hundred residential messes in the city, as police are carrying out raids in different city parts to nab militants.
The raids came following the July 1 attack at a Gulshan café and the operation at a Kalyanpur mess on July 26.
College and university students and those having jobs are now living in serious uncertainty as landlords are either serving notices to bachelor tenants or declining to rent out houses to them. They said they were doing so out of fear of harassment.
Following the Kalyanpur raid, a rumour spread in the area that house owners were asked not to rent their flats to bachelors.
However, Masudur Rahman, deputy commissioner (media and publication) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said on July 30 that they did not give any such instruction to house owners.
Police rather asked the landlords to keep detail information about the tenants, he added.
According to a DMP instruction, house owners have to submit detail information of their tenants to the local police stations.
Masudur Rahman said the police raids were there before and after the Gulshan café attack, the raids became regular. Police intensified the raids particularly after a militant den was busted in Kalyanpur, he said, adding that the raids would go on.
The police official, however, did not say how long the raids would continue.
Shamim Hossain, a university admission seeker who lives at a hostel in Farmgate, said their hostel supervisor asked them to carry ID cards with them all the time to avoid police harassment.
“Two days ago, our hostel supervisor asked us not to keep any book which is about jihad or radicalism,” he added. Shamim also said he was feeling insecure due to all this and could not concentrate on his studies.
Sohan Obayed, a final-year law student at ASA University, said he shares a flat with a senior at Shyamoli. Police raided the house a couple of days ago and asked them to provide information.
He said he provided all information accordingly and law enforcers asked him to be cautious and inform them if anything suspicious happened.
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“It is already difficult for bachelors to find a place to live in and it's nothing new. But if you follow the rules, I think there shouldn't be any problem to live as a bachelor,” Sohan noted.
A Jagannath University student who stays at a mess at the city's Loharpool said, “We are not allowed to bring in any guest or relative, let alone give them shelter at night.”
He said their landlord had strengthened security following the recent militant attacks.
Seeking anonymity, another student who studies computer science at the same university said they are living in fear as one of their roommates is a student of Islamic Studies and he has to study several books written in Arabic.
“This is a great worry for us. What if police take it as an offense for keeping books written in Arabic,” he added.
About 7,000 to 8,000 students of the university live in different messes in the old part of the capital, according to university sources.
Eleus Khan, a service holder who lives with bachelors at a flat in Farmgate's East Tejturibazar, said, “Given the current situation, we fear that the house owner may ask us to leave the flat anytime.”
However, Abdul Matin Biswas, a landlord at Mansurabad Housing in the city's Adabor area, said he has no reservation about renting out flats to bachelors if they abide by the rules and regulations.
“It is not the question whether tenants are bachelors or family members. The question is whether they are following the rules accordingly,” he added.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Mess Organisation on Friday formed a human chain in front of the Jatiya Press Club, protesting harassment of mess dwellers during anti-militant drives by law enforcers.
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