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Highway robbery goes unabated

Complain truck, covered van owners

Staff Correspondent
A section of truck and covered van owners are involved in looting of vehicles carrying goods on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway, vehicle owners said yesterday.
That was why highway robberies could not yet be stopped, they said. Law enforcement agencies had identified many of the gangs involved in the crime but all of them could not be captured.
Some truck owners support those gangs as they consider robbery as an easy means of getting quick bucks, speakers said at a press conference at the Jatiya Press Club in the capital. Inter-district goods transportation and vehicles owners' association (Sangram Parisad), Chittagong, made the claim.
M Yusuf Bin Majumder Manik, joint convener of the organisation, said robberies continued because the vehicle owners themselves were involved. So, it was difficult for police to nab the culprits.
For these unscrupulous owners, general truck and covered van owners have to compensate the owners of the goods stolen and so they suffer the financial loss, he said. Every clay more than ten thousand vehicles leave Chittagong and Mongla ports with imported goods for different parts of the country while a huge number of vehicles rush to the ports with export items, Manik said. The robbers get information from some owners, who either have connections with those gangs or themselves run the gangs.
Vehicle owners send messages to the gangs when someone book a truck or covered van for carrying goods, Manik added.
Elaborating further, he said that when a truck goes missing with goods, some leaders of the vehicle owners' association become active. They advise goods owners not to file any case to avoid police harassments and assure them of compen- sation.
The leaders then contact the robbers and after negotiation the total loss is divided into three portions -- the truck's owner gives one third, robbers give another one third and the owner of goods bears the rest.
"We know some of our association leaders are involved with robberies and stage the 'compensation drama'. But we can do nothing as they have political backup," Manik said.
To bring a change, the association leaders had demanded that the government conduct polls to elect a new body for the association, which had not been done in last sixteen years.
Deputy Inspector General of Highway Police Humayun Kabir told The Daily Star that transport owners' involvement in
robberies is a new dimension and that highway police had no proof to substantiate the allegation.
"I don't know how a vehicle owner gets involved because he never rents out his vehicle directly. He gives it to an agency which deals with goods owners," he said adding, however, that police would look into the mater.
The performance of highway police in curbing robberies is not satisfactory as they have a shortage of manpower.
To meet the needs they are going to introduce two more regions-- north and south. The north one will be formed will) Sylhet, Mymensing and Dhaka districts and the south with Khulna, Barisal and Faridpur districts. A superintendent of police will be in charge of each region, Humayun said.