Police in riot gear accompanied the bulldozers as they knocked down the houses in Pora Basti section of the Kallyanpur slum, Dhaka, on 21 January 2016. By mid-day, a High Court judge ordered the demolition to stop, saying that a ten-year old High Court order against demolition was still in force. Local people reported that the next day, after most residents – mainly rickshaw pullers, domestic help, street sellers or day labourers – had gone to work, a team of 50 ‘goons’ with iron bars and knives arrived and poured petrol on houses and set them on fire, and then held off the fire service until police arrived to support the fire fighters. An estimated 600 shanties and 125 shops were destroyed. The daily New Age said residents demonstrated against the local MP, Aslamul Haque, whom they blamed for the evictions. ‘Aslam's men torched our houses pouring petrol to evict us by force, because High Court has ruled against our eviction,’ said Nadim Mohammad, a slum leader. Aslam denied the allegation. Aslam is what is locally called an ‘influential person’. As well as being a member of parliament, he is founder and chair of Maisha Property, which bills itself as a ‘pre-eminent developer of land in the Dhaka metropolitan area’. Its website says ‘When we purchase land, it's always based on strategic location so that we can extend urbanization and create potential sector for real estate and industrial development.’ Kallyanpur has become a ‘strategic location’ because one route of the proposed bus rapid transit system will have a station there, raising the value of the land; Maisha Group wants to build the line and has made a presentation to the prime minister.

The Centre for Urban Studies notes that Dhaka has one of the highest prices of residential land in the world – more than $12,000 per m2 in Gulshan, the most expensive part of the city. In Dhaka two-thirds of the cost of a new apartment is the cost of the land. Thus land grabbing can be hugely profitable.