Extortionists to businessmen: Pay money or go to hell

Nothing to be worried: Home Minister

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Staff Reporter :
Ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr businessmen in the city continued to receive phone calls from extortionists asking them to pay money or go to hell.
The extortionists introducing themselves as ruling party men and local influential are demanding money as Eid tips over phones or sending their accomplices from footpath hawkers to luxurious shopping malls.
Apart from the businessmen, they also targeted the house owners, physicians, bankers, highly paid officials and executives of private companies.
The armed extortionists are now roaming the city’s most luxurious shopping malls in Dhanmodi, New Market, Nilkhet, Gulshan, Banani, Rampura, Mouchak, Malibag, Badda, Baridhara and other places of the city, including Old Dhaka.
When contacted, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Thursday evening termed the extortionists as fake, saying nothing to be worried.
 “I’m requesting the city dwellers not to be panicked and lodge complaint with their respective police stations. Apart from police, other law enforcers like elite force RAB are now on the field to protect the people’ life and properties,” he said.
Replying to a query he said that he had been informed about the matter.
 “I’m again saying whatever the extortionists might be they will have to face dire consequences. They will be caught. Please, give me their (extortionists) phone numbers I will see the matter. I myself is monitoring the overall law and order situation,” the Minister said.
Rahman, (not real name), a resident of city’s Uttara area, who owns a showroom housed to the Rajlaxmi Complex said that since beginning of the Ramzan he and his fellow businessmen continued to receive calls by different groups of local extortionists.
 “I received a phone call on Wednesday morning from an unidentified person. As soon as I received the phone, the caller introducing himself as the most influential person in the locality asked me to pay Tk 20,000 as Eid tip. If I fail to meet his demand, my body will be sent to my wife and children. And if I complain to the law enforcers, I will be shot dead in a broad day light,” he said.
He also said other businessmen also received similar phone calls from the extortionists till date.
 “As we shop-owners shared the incident of extortionists’ phone calls each other, I and other continued receiving such calls till Wednesday midnight. I have been asked why I shared the matter with others,” Rahman said.
A house owner, who owns two six-storey buildings in the city’s Framgate area, said he can not rely on the law enforcers as he has been paying money to the local hoodlums since construction of the buildings.
 “Whether the law enforcers always encircle me? Is it possible? I want to live in city with my family members safely. My family members or I don’t want to be murdered. So, I don’t inform the police and continue paying toll,” he said.
A physician who practises in the city’s Rampura area, preferring not to be named, said he had to pay Tk 10,000 to local musclemen facing a threat of dire consequences if he did not come up with the sum.
“The caller threatened me that my family members would be kidnapped and killed if I fail to pay money,” he said.
Businessmen and shop owners of Nilkhet, New Market and Farmgate areas alleged that some local leaders of ruling Awami League, its associate bodies and students’ wing, are sending their cadres or making phone calls demanding tolls.
 “On an average, they charged a business house Tk 10,000 to ‘meet their Eid expenses.”
 “I paid Tk 30,000 to the extortionists after they had threatened to gun down me when I return home,” said a shopowner of New Market on condition of anonymity.
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