Tongi

Tongi

Tongi (Bengali: টঙ্গী) is a major township in Gazipur, Bangladesh, with a population of 350,000. It hosts the Biswa Ijtema and features a BSCIC industrial area, which produces BDT 1500 crore of industrial products annually,[3][4] and marks the northern border of Dhaka since 1786.[5] Tongi Shahid Smrity high School compound is mass burial site of the genocide in Liberation War of Bangladesh.[3] Mir Jumla II (1660–1663) built a fort to protect the northern entry of Dhaka during his reign as a Mughal subadar (1660–1663).[5][6] The subadar also built a bridge over the river Turag.[5] Mir Jumla constructed a road, now a part of the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway, that connected Tongi with Bag-e-Badshahi. It served as an axis of urban growth in the 19th and 20th centuries as sites for establishment of new urban settlements - Gulshan (formed in 1961), Banani (in 1964), Baridhara (in 1972) and Uttara (in 1965) - were picked off the highlands along that axis road.[5] In 1786, Tongi-Jamalpur was designated as the northern boundary of Dhaka by the East India Company, reaffirmed by John Taylor, the first English Commercial Resident of Dhaka in 1800.[5]