“I came here as a child, worked for 11 years at this very market and with my savings and some loan from relatives, bank and cooperatives, I invested Tk 22 lakh in a store here. Today, everything is gone.”

A distraught, Didar Hossain, owner of a cosmetics store at the Gulshan-1 Dhaka North City Corporation market, said this after it went up in flames this morning.

A part of the market that houses over 600 shops collapsed following the fire, which is still out of control since it broke out around 2:00am.

Businessmen fear the incident was an act of sabotage.

“I had about Tk 25-Tk 30 lakh worth of goods inside my store and I could not salvage a single thing. I learnt about the fire around 3:30am and rushed to the market to find everything in shambles,” Didar, who came to Dhaka from Shibchar area in Madaripur at the age of 10, told our correspondent reporting from the spot.

The scene in front of the Gulshan-1 market was apocalyptic. Family members of many businessmen joined in to help salvage the goods. But by 12:00pm gloom settled over the businessmen and their families and most of them just gave up.

The owner of a store named Sports Quality in the Paka Market, Md Bilal Hossain, said “I am finished. I could not get anything out.” The businessman was even contemplating ending his life.

Saleha Begum, 55, looks blankly as a shop owned by her son was shattered to the ground when a portion of the Gulshan DCC market collapsed following a fire on January 3, 2017. 

Mijanur Rahman, who had bought a shop in the market last Ramadan and set up a crockery store, was witnessing its destruction in the morning when his mother, Saleha Begum, 55, rushed to Dhaka from Munshiganj hearing the bad news.

Mijanur bought the shop with Tk 80 lakh and the store had products worth more than Tk 20 lakh. The shop collapsed among numerous others when a portion of the Gulshan DCC market was brought down by the fire early this morning.

“Even if the shop was standing there, we could have rebuilt the store and continued our livelihood. But the shop has shattered down to the ground, leaving us with no future for the family,” Saleha Begum said.