Taibur Rahman, a rock extractor, along with five fellow workers and a rock loaded truck sunk into the ground soon after the incident at Madhya Goyabari Kouwa Dhanipara village on Sunday. The area covered 30 decimals of agricultural land.

Local people and fire brigade personnel rescued five people including the owner of the land, Ameer Ali, 60. The five included Moslem,35, Hafizur,32, Nazrul,30, and two others. Fire brigade personnel tried their best to rescue Taibur Rahman till night but failed. Later, local people recovered the body yesterday morning.

There are about 200 illegal rock extraction sites in the area where landslide is a common phenomenon. Because of the phenomenon, local people live in constant panic.

Illegal rock extraction is going on unabated in the aforesaid area for the last one decade. Ignoring ban on extraction of rock and sand, unscrupulous traders were carrying on the illegal act since the Awami League regime. Rocks of different sizes are easily available from 3 to 4 feet depth in the area.

During the 4-Party Alliance rule jointly led by BNP and Jamaat, the ruling party leaders started engaging heavy rock extracting machines in cultivatable lands in Tepakhari Bari, Khalisa Chapani , Sutibari, Noutara, Goyabari and other villages.

A top BNP leader of Dimla at the blessing of former prime minister's nephew Shahrin Islam Tuhin was engaged to collect money from rock and sand loaded trucks till the fag end of the immediate past BNP-Jamaat rule.

The then ministry of mineral resources, in a gazette notification on 26 June 2004, directed to stop rock extraction. The assistant commissioner (Land) of Dimla upazila served notice to rock extractors to stop illegal rock extraction using heavy machine on February 14, 2005. Ignoring the ban, rock extraction is still going on unabated. In the meantime, land subsided several times at different places in the upazila causing several deaths.

Locals feared a major disaster might occur at any time if senseless rock extraction is not stopped immediately. On contact, the newly appointed Upazila Nirbahi Officer of Dimla Upazila said he would take steps against the violators of law after an investigation.