The company, Chowdhury Group, has raised a wall around some two bighas of land and hung a number of signboards claiming its possession.

"Rajuk has drawn a plan, as part of its 13-acre Sonargaon-Hatirjheel development project, to restore the canal as a natural and strong sewage discharge system stretching up to Rampura Bridge," Rajuk Chairman Md Shahid Alam told Star City.

Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) has already submitted a plan for this project. "We are going to hire a consultant soon to excavate and develop the canal," Alam said, adding, "The canal exists in the Dhaka Master Plan also."

Chowdhury Group claims the land saying that the company has obtained a lower court order in its favour. But Acting Divisional Estate Officer of Bangladesh Railway Khairul Alam said the land belongs to railway and the railway authorities have not allotted it to any one.

"I have sent the estate department officials to the site to stop any development work, fencing or demarcation," he said last week.

Railway officials said in case somebody owns the land by a court order, the railway as a party must know it. "But we are not aware of any court case in this regard," Khairul Alam said, "We will go to court as the railway has not relinquished the possession of the land."

The railway acquired the area in 1953, he said.

Asif Chowdhury, son of Chowdhury Group Chairman Badrul Alam Chowdhury and managing director of K Line Shipping, said the railway can't claim the land now as the requisition becomes untenable after a certain period if it is kept unused.

"It's my private property and I will not talk to any one about it," he said at first, but later claimed: "We have purchased the land from its original owner Sobhan Bepari and took its possession by a court order evicting illegal occupation."

Refuting Chowdhury's argument that requisition becomes invalid after a certain period, Alam said that the government has many lands in its possession for long like this one.

Prof Muzaffer Ahmad, a noted economist and environmentalist, said the Dhaka Master Plan shows the Begunbari canal as a flood plain. As per existing law, even the Rajuk cannot acquire it. Private grabbers will naturally take advantage when government agencies violate environmental and water body conservation laws, he said.

Habil, who runs a small factory near the site, said several hundred men of Chowdhury, with red band tied around their heads, came to demolish part of a makeshift slum on the canal and shops along the road on December 1 without any prior notice.

Chowdhury's men, backed by police, asked the occupants to remove their belongings in half an hour. They demolished the slum and built a boundary wall. "We have heard of different owners of the land," said Habil. "Only god knows who owns the canal and the land."