Bangladesh bachelors face accommodation crisis

Bachelors in Bangladesh are finding it hard to find accommodation with landlords declining to rent out houses to them in the wake of extra security vigil due to the increased terror threat, prompting police to clarify that there is no directive against bachelor tenants.

“The main thing we want the landlords to do is to keep all information regarding their tenants, we have issued no directive barring them to rent out their houses to bachelors or serve them notice to vacate the houses,” Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s deputy commissioner Madudur Rahman told a press conference.

“It is entirely the prerogative of landlords who should be their tenants, we just want to ensure security of all,” he said.

The police clarification came as media reports stated that a number of landlords served notices to bachelor tenants, particularly who were living in groups in rented houses, or declined to rent out their houses to unmarried youths.

A sense of panic has gripped landlords after a security raid on July 26 killed nine militants who were living in group at a rented apartment in Dhaka’s Kalyanpur area.

After the raid, part of the single biggest anti-terrorist security clampdown in the country, police re-issued a previous directive reminding an earlier mandatory provision to submit the detailed tenant information to the nearest police station.

The police issued the directive several months ago after Islamist militants were found to have setup their hideouts at rented houses as ordinary tenants.

The Kalyanpur raid was carried out as part of an intensified nationwide security clampdown following the July 1 terrorist attack at a Dhaka cafe and assault on an Id congregation at northern Sholakia six days later.

Missing youths hailing from both the affluent and poor families and studying in posh western-style English medium schools and rural madrasas appeared to the perpetrators of the attacks.

Several of the perpetrators of the Dhaka’s Holey Artisan restaurant and the Shalakia attacks were students of costly private universities at home and abroad. The regulatory University Grants Commission (UGC), in a related development, on Sunday formed a three-member committee to monitor all public and private colleges along with universities across the country for any militant activity.