How ‘golden’ telescope guarded MP’s palace-like home
The house having the resemblance of an estate belonging to the late Zamindar culture is the dwelling place of Haji Salim and his son Mohammad Erfan Salim, 37 – also the councilor of Ward No 30 under the Dhaka South City Corporation
A golden coloured telescope was set up on the rooftop to monitor people's movement at the entrance of the palace-like residence belonging to a member of parliament from Dhaka.
The two viewfinders of the telescope were used to watch out for unwanted visitors to the eight-storey building named "Chan Sarder Dadabari" at 17 Debidas Ghat lane of Dhaka's Chawkbazar area, owned by Dhaka-7 lawmaker Haji Mohammad Salim.
The house having a resemblance to an estate belonging to the late Zamindar culture is the dwelling place of Haji Salim and his son Mohammad Erfan Salim, 37 – also the councilor of Ward No 30 under the Dhaka South City Corporation.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
The villa was equipped with the virtual private server (VPS) technology, which can evade mobile phone location tracking.
There were 38 sets of walkie-talkies in the villa. The walkie-talkies could be used to communicate within an area of around 5-10 kilometres.
No one could enter the highly secured and well-equipped villa without the MP family's permission, not even law enforcers.
On the morning of 26 October, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) carried out a drive at the villa to arrest Erfan Salim, the prime accused in a case filed over the assault on a Navy officer and his wife.
The law enforcers also arrested two other accused – Erfan's bodyguard Md Jahid, 35, and driver Md Mizanur Rahman, 30, – within 24 hours of the incident.
RAB Executive Magistrate Sarwoer Alam told The Business Standard that they had seized foreign liquors, firearms and illegal walkie-talkies during the drive.
"The villa was also full of luxury items, like a decades-old highly expensive radio set, apart from the golden telescope," he added.
