While Eid-ul-Azha is celebrated as a festival of sacrifice and sharing, a different picture emerged across Chattogram city on Thursday, as sacrificial beef was openly sold by the kilogram in makeshift roadside markets.
In Baluchara area, fifty-year-old Sakhina Begum arrived at the local market in the afternoon carrying nearly five kilograms of beef collected from different residential neighborhoods. She was asking Tk 4,000 for the meat.
Like Sakhina, dozens of poor men and women, along with butchers who worked during Qurbani, gathered at Baluchara market to sell portions of sacrificial meat they had received. Many buyers were people who could not afford to offer Qurbani this year but still wanted to enjoy fresh beef on Eid day at comparatively lower prices.
The scene was not limited to Baluchara alone. Similar temporary meat markets appeared across different parts of Chittagong, including Oxygen, Gate No. 2, GEC intersection, Bayezid Link Road and Rajesh Khan areas. Roadside stalls and alley entrances turned into floating meat bazaars where sacrificial beef was being sold between Tk 700 and Tk 1,000 per kilogram.
Besides beef, cow intestines and liver were also in high demand among customers.
A visit to several areas revealed that many low-income people and seasonal meat collectors had gathered sacrificial meat distributed by wealthy households and apartment buildings earlier in the day. After keeping a portion for their own families, they brought the remaining meat to roadside stalls for sale in exchange for cash.
Md. Karim, a meat seller at Bayezid Link Road, said he had worked as a butcher during the Eid sacrifice and received several kilograms of meat as payment.
“I needed money for my family, so after keeping some meat for home, I decided to sell the rest,” he said.
Buyers at these floating markets said the stalls provided an affordable option for middle-class and lower-income families struggling with rising living costs. Many expressed relief at being able to purchase fresh beef on Eid despite not being able to perform Qurbani themselves.
Though informal in nature, these temporary meat markets appeared to play an unwritten social role — helping spread the joy of Eid-ul-Azha to households that might otherwise have been left out of the celebration.
