Miscreants on Thursday attacked a group of workers on the land  owned by Dhaka Sangbadik Samabay Samity Limited (DSSSL), a cooperative society of Dhaka-based journalists, in the Jhilpar area of Pallabi.

They brandished pistols, machetes, and other sharp weapons, threatening the workers engaged in land development.

The attackers verbally abused the construction workers in vulgar language and warned them that if any development work was carried out without their consent, they would kill them.

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In response to the incident, Md. Sadekul Islam, the official responsible for the development work on behalf of Mallick Properties & Enterprise Limited, filed a complaint at the Pallabi police station on Thursday.

In 2006, under the directive of then-Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, the National Housing Authority allocated this 7-acre plot in Pallabi’s Jhilpar area to the DSSSL for the housing of senior journalists.

The 300-member society paid the market price for the land, after which the Housing Authority handed it over to them.

However, after the Awami League came to power in 2009, local Member of Parliament Elias Uddin Molla forcibly occupied the land under the cover of darkness. Using his gang, he established cattle farms, a bakery, and various semi-permanent and makeshift houses, from which he collected rent and maintained control over the property.

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After the fall of the dictatorship in last July’s revolution, Elias Molla, like other Awami League leaders, fled the area.

On January 21, with the assistance of the administration, the National Housing Authority once again evicted all illegal structures from the land and returned it to the journalists’ cooperative society. Since then, development work on the land has been ongoing. However, in the midst of this, Thursday’s terrorist threat took place.