Fresh allegations of extortion have emerged from Lalmonirhat’s Patgram upazila, with claims that local activists are using the name of the opposition party BNP to extract money from transporters carrying sand and stones.
The accusation came from Sarjis Alam, the chief organizer of the National Citizen Party (NCP), who made the claim in a verified Facebook post early Wednesday.
Tagging BNP’s acting chairman Tarique Rahman and secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, Sarjis alleged that vehicles transporting legally sourced sand and stone are being stopped and forced to pay between 500 and 1000 taka per truck.
“This isn’t a one-time thing. It’s happening regularly, and it’s amounting to millions in illegal collections,” he wrote.
Sarjis then laid out how the situation exploded. It started, he said, when the local administrator (UNO) in Patgram cracked down on an extortion ring, arresting two men and jailing them for a month.
According to his post, the reaction was immediate and violent. He claims hundreds of BNP and Swechchhasebak Dal members swarmed the police station, vandalized it, and simply broke the two men out.
To make matters worse, when a neighboring police station tried to send help, the mob surrounded them too, leaving police completely powerless.
Sarjis expressed concern about what he described as protection of extortionists by some local leaders.
“There needs to be a clear position from the party on those who abuse power locally. Fixing the country starts with fixing ourselves,” he wrote. “We don’t want to hear what BNP says anymore. We want to see what they do against wrongdoing — even if it’s their own people.”
No public response has been issued yet by the BNP central leadership regarding the claims. Local police and administrative officials have also not confirmed the details of the events mentioned.
