Locals loot FFP rice in Sylhet

Locals looted a truck of Food Friendly Programme rice at Kaliganj bazar in Sylhet's Zakiganj upazila yesterday morning after raising allegation that a dealer involved with the programme was conspiring to misappropriate the subsidised staple.

The FFP rice was supposed to be sold to card-holders of Manikpur, Kaskanakpur and Barthakuri unions of the upazila at a special price of Tk 10 per kg and 30 kgs per family.

Mahtab Hossain Chowdhury, chairman of Manikpur union of the upazila, said, "The truck, loaded with 570 sacks of rice for 684 families of three unions, reached Kaliganj bazar last night and rice for 228 families of Manikpur union was supposed to be unloaded to the dealer's point in the bazaar."

"The remaining rice was supposed to be sent to the respective unions but the dealer of a nearby Kaskanakpur union owns a rice store in this bazar and allegedly unloaded rice here. Locals first started protesting and then they looted the whole truck," he said.

Bijon Kumar Singha, upazila nirbahi officer of Zakiganj, said, "We were not informed until last night [Saturday night] about the rice to be brought to Zakiganj. When informed this morning, I rushed to the spot and found 14 sacks of rice in the union's dealer's store while we found another 26 or 27 sacks at the store of the dealer of a nearby union.

"The dealer claimed that locals dropped these rice sacks in his store to frame him. Meanwhile, most sacks of rice was looted from the truck by the locals and police recovered some," he said.

Lutfur Rahman, additional superintendent of Sylhet District Police, said, "We are investigating the matter of embezzlement of the rice and looting of the truck. A case will be filed in this regard soon.

"We detained two dealers, the truck driver and his helper, and two other locals. So far 346 sacks of rice have been recovered and police are looking for the rest," he said.