Gulshan market shop owners blame realtor for fire

Authorities have so far failed to find out the real owners of the 7.5 bighas of land of the DNCC Market at Gulshan-1, which was gutted by a   devastating fire, for the second time in two years, on Saturday.
The Dhaka Improvement Trust or DIT, later renamed RAJUK, allotted the land to several people before the War of Liberation in 1971.  
The land was transferred to the then Dhaka City Corporation but, in the meantime, the land changed hands as it was rented out at least five to six times. Traders are also not the real land owners of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Market at Gulshan-1.
The land of the kitchen market in the posh residential area is more expensive than any other pieces of land in Dhaka city.
Affected shop owners of the fire-ravaged market smell sabotage in the pre-dawn fire which gutted everything they owned for the second time in two
years. They lost about Tk 100 crore collectively in Saturday's fire. Even after the 2017 fire that led to a staggering Tk 500 crore loss, they held a real estate developer responsible for the incident.
The DNCC authorities had floated a tender in 2010 aiming to build a new establishment on the piece of land on which the market is located.  The Metro Group won the bid and was planning to construct a multi-storied facility on the land covering 7.5 bighas.
Deen Mohammad, President of the Shop Owners' Association of the DNCC Kitchen Market, said they were not opposing the DNCC move to construct a multi-storied building.
 "But we suspect that Metro Group might be behind the arson since its authorities were not assuring us of rehabilitation in the new building once it will be constructed," he said.
 "A five-member committee has been formed by the Dhaka Fire Service and Civil Defence over the devastating fire.
Sources from the fire service have confirmed that the fire broke out from the DNCC kitchen market, and further details will be made available after submission of the investigation report.
Awami League Acting General Secretary Mahbub-Ul-Alam Hanif on Saturday said the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) market would turn into a modern shopping mall.
The Awami League leader said president and the general secretary of the DNCC Kitchen Market Traders' Association were also supporting his move.
On January 2 of 2017 the Gulshan-1 DNCC Market was burned down in a massive blaze. Many stores in the makeshift market were also burned down in the blaze.
After the incident two years ago, the erstwhile Dhaka North mayor Annisul Huq had said that a shopping mall would be built in place of the DNCC market.
The city corporation is inquiring into the extent of the damage caused to the shop owners of the market, he added.