Ferdous Alam, the food inspector of Bhotmari government warehouse of Kaliganj upazila, went missing with about three and a half crore Tk worth government rice.
On Thursday morning, he lifted the rice from the warehouse in 25 trolleys.
Kaliganj Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) Zahir Imam along with officers from district food department conducted a raid on basis of secret information. During the raid, they recovered 600 sacks of rice from Ekramul Haque’s warehouse who is owner of a rice mill at Sukandighi area of Chalbala Union. The recovered rice weighs 30 tons.
Police ran raids in search of Ferdous Alam as Upazila food officer Enamul Haque filed a case with Kaliganj police station on Friday.
On the same day, HM Raqib Hayder, Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Lalmonirhat, formed a four-member committee, led by additional district magistrate and district food controller (Acting) as member secretary, to investigate the incident and submit a report within five working days. Later, the DC visited the spot.
Upazila food officer Enamul Haque said, “What he has done is totally unacceptable. We’ve filed a case; also an investigation committee has been formed to scrutinize the incident. He will be brought to justice soon.”
UNO Zahir Imam said, “We went to the warehouse on basis of secret information. But there we found no officer, later we sealed the warehouse being instructed by the higher authority.”
“In the meantime, we recovered 30 metric tons of the missing rice from a rice mill, now we are trying to find the warehouse officer. The raids will continue till we arrest the accused officer,” he added firmly.
DC HM Raqib Hayder said, “Ferdous Alam went missing after misappropriating 250 metric tons of rice from the government warehouse. To investigate the incident, we formed a committee.”
On the other hand, a truck with 24.5 metric tons of government rice was seized during illegal smuggling in Kaliganj upazila. Locals impounded the truck at Roshan filling station in Tushbhander of the upazila around 10:30 pm on Friday.
(The report was published on print and online versions of The Bangladesh Pratidin on October 6 and rewritten in English by Afsar Munna)
