14 February 2018
The issue of violence used by creditors and loan sharks often resulting in fatalities has been long ignored. This problem mainly afflicts the poor class and the lower middle class. The expats are also long-time sufferers. In Domar, Chilahati, Nilphamari, the family of UK resident Md Masum Sajjad have been subject of recent attacks by the miscreants who are working for the creditors who are deploying vicious tactics to force the family to sell off their last vestige of assets to ensure the extremely high interest and the main are extracted by any means. Authorities are accused of being either wilfully ignorant or being in cahoots with these lenders.
Md Masum Sajjad’s mother wept and shared her helplessness. Md. Masum Sajjad upon being contacted in the UK over the phone vented his frustration at the current government and its failure to do anything about the rogue creditors. He further said that the actual sum owed was paid off long ago and now it is the highly improper hikes in the interest rates which the family either to swallow or accept physical violence. What choice do they have, he asks when nobody would help them given the political backing these creditors enjoy. They can buy off favours which the family cannot.
Similar incidents are happening too much and there is a sense of widespread lawlessness in this regard. Lawyers who provide legal services in these kinds of matters have indicated their concerns by opining that it is far too common for people simply to give in to unlawful demands of the moneylenders instead of taking any legal actions given the entrenched fear of fatal ramifications as is common across the country and even those who show the courage to bring forth legal actions are generally dissuaded from continuing their cases because of things that happen after the commencement of the legal proceedings. It is clear they get brutally intimidated and harassed to withdraw their legal actions.
There are some statutory schemes to thwart the atrocious cycles run by the loan sharks but the situation on the ground is very different. Ministries of Home Affairs and Justice and Parliamentary affairs have declined to comment.
