The white stone area is now a desert due to rampant looting

Among the tourist attractions in Sylhet, the Bholaganj White Stone Tourist Center is at the top of the list of favorites for travel enthusiasts. Under the nose of the administration, the Bholaganj White Stone Tourist Center has been turned into a desert due to horrific looting in the last one year. Almost all the white stones have been looted from here in one year. After looting the upper stones, work is now underway to extract the stones by digging holes. This looting has been going on uninterruptedly since August 5 last year. Environmental activists and local tourism businessmen complain that earlier, white stone beds could be seen as far as the eye could see, but now there is only a sandy beach. According to them, 15 million cubic feet of stones have been looted in one year. The estimated market value of which is more than 200 crore taka. White Stone is a naturally created tourist center. In 2017, a landslide deposited stones over a five-acre area at the source of the Dhalai River in Bholaganj Pathar Mahal in Companiganj Upazila of Sylhet. The last time stones were deposited there was in 1990 due to landslides. Those stones were called ‘Dhalasona’. However, those stones were destroyed by looting after the landslides. After 27 years, the stones were deposited again and were protected by the Upazila administration and the local Union Parishad. Since that year, the entire area has been known as a natural tourist center.