A chamber judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court (SC) yesterday stayed for twp weeks,all activities on a vast 40-acre forest belt in Sitakunda where a fewinfluential people razed 15,000 Keura and Bain trees on Friday to develop ship-breakingyards.

Justice MA Aziz issued the stay order following a petition filed by the high officials of the forest department in Dhaka, sources said.

Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Chittagong Coastal Forest Division SM Khaleque Khan yesterday said the court order

came in favour of the forest belt near Sonaichhari coast but the plunderers have already destroyed the greens.

"What we can do now is to re-establish our control over the land by cancellation of the lease and restart of forestation on die land to save the coastal embankment," he said.

The DFO, however, alleged noncooperation from land administration saying, “We requested them (land office) to provide us the documents of lease of the land but we're yet to get those.”

Hailing the move and the stay order, Syeda

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Rizwana Hasan, executive director of Bangladesh Environment Lawyers Association (Bela), stressed the need for establishing immediate control over the land by the forest department and hanging a signboard of the stay order.

The Bela chief, who also helped the move, urged to realise compensation from the plunderers against damaging the trees and try to cancel the lease through legal battle so that none can be able to raze any forest or greens in future.

Over 500 workers hired by some influential people felled the trees worth over Tk 1.1 crore with electric saws and machetes on Friday in a bid to build ship-breakingyards.

Sources said Md Nurun Nabi Bhuiyan, Md Adnan and Md Salahuddin alias Salahuddin Haji had hired the workers to develop five new ship breaking yards there.