Asha Enterprise, a construction company owned by ruling party MP Nasiruddin Pintu, began constructing the road early this month. At first a 20-foot wide road was to be built, but now the road has been widened to 23 feet. This will leave no trace of at least 4,000 graves instead of previously noted 200.

Pintu told the Star City that he did not receive any official letter from the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) to stop the construction.

"I got a written work order. So why should I stop the construction on a verbal order?" asked Pintu.

DCC's zonal office at Azimpur issued a work order to construct a link road between BDR gate on New Market side and Azimpur Road in December, last year.

The company that was awarded the order started construction of the 1.5 km long road inside one of the oldest graveyards in the city.

Locals and relatives of those buried in this graveyard got agitated when they came to know about the construction of the road.

Consequent to a report published in a national daily on the issue, the mayor last Wednesday verbally ordered his officials to stop construction. But the work continued the following day defying the mayor's order.

It is alleged that though the work was stopped during the day on Thursday, it started again in full swing late at night.

Workers have already felled seven trees planted specially by the kith and kin of those buried with many more to follow.

DCC's chief town planner, Mohammad Sirajul Islam said that he knew nothing about such construction, said to be worth Tk 1.17 crore.

When asked about the feelings of the relatives of those buried in the graveyard, Pintu said: "Constructing the road has been a long pending demand by the locals and as the representative of this area, I want to construct this road to ease people's communication problems."

Sadeque Hossain Khoka, DCC mayor told the Star City that he would take action against the DCC officials who had defied his verbal order.

"I had ordered the concerned officials of DCC, including the chief engineer and executive officer to suspend the work. I will issue a cancellation order tomorrow (Sunday)," said the mayor.

When asked what action will be taken against the construction firm that disobeyed his order, he said: "We will take action against them as per rules."

To a question how the DCC could allow such a sensitive project, the mayor said that they had planned to build a link road between Azimpur and Newmarket.

"After the Azimpur Road was made off-limit to rickshaws, the local people were suffering and to give them some relief we initiated the construction of a link road but had no intention of doing away with any of the graves," the mayor said.

Local commissioner Mir Ashraf Ali Azam said this problem could be solved easily if the link road is constructed inside the Azimpur colony.

"As I opposed the construction, the MP abused me verbally when I met him at a funeral programme today (Saturday)," said Azam, who is also a leader of ruling BNP. "He blamed me for bringing this issue to the knowledge of the authority," he added.