The Sylhet district administration on Wednesday launched a five-point initiative to prevent stone theft and recover illegally extracted stones.
Sylhet Deputy Commissioner Sher Mahbub Murad said the decision was taken during a coordination meeting at the Sylhet Circuit House, convened by both district and divisional authorities, with senior officials from all levels present.
The five-point plan includes 24-hour deployment of joint forces in the Jaflong Ecological Area and the Bholaganj Sada Pathar sites; continuous joint force presence at police checkpoints in Gowainghat and Companyganj; ongoing operations to disconnect electricity and shut down illegal crushing machines; identification, arrest, and prosecution of all involved in stone theft; and recovery of stolen stones to return them to their original locations.
Recent inaction by the administration and unchecked activities of influential individuals have threatened Sylhet's stone quarries and the pristine white stones of Jaflong.
Since August 5 last year, local political parties, including Jamaat-e-Islami, BNP, NCP, and religious leaders like Charmonai Pir Fazlul Haque, have repeatedly demanded the reopening of stone quarries.
They staged human chains, press conferences, and strikes, citing previous governments' closures in favour of what they called Indian interests and claiming that stone extraction caused floods, a contention widely criticised.
Meanwhile, political and administrative lapses enabled a 'stone mafia' to loot resources both openly and under the cover of darkness.
The recent media reports of massive stone theft triggered nationwide attention.
Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Adviser to the Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, expressed frustration, saying, "As an environmentalist, I managed to stop stone extraction in Sylhet for four years, but now even as an adviser, I could not."
Following these events, the Sylhet administration formed a three-member inquiry committee on Tuesday, headed by an Additional Deputy Commissioner, to investigate unprecedented stone thefts at the Bholaganj Sada Pathar tourism site.
Daily protests and human chains by civil society and environmental groups continue in Sylhet city against the thefts.
A nine-member team from the Sylhet office of the Anti-Corruption Commission, led by Deputy Director Rafi Muhammad Najmus Sadat, visited the site on Wednesday.
The ACC stated that influential businessmen, high-ranking officials, and locals may be involved in the widespread looting.
Due to the ACC office's distance, immediate action was difficult, and the names of those complicit in the thefts will be forwarded to the central office for further investigation, said ACC officials.
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