Across Dhaka, this relentless cat-and-mouse game plays out daily. Unauthorised charging hubs for battery-powered rickshaws, popularly called as Bangla Tesla, continue to thrive despite repeated crackdowns.
The Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Traffic Division has identified roughly 50,000 illegal charging points across the capital, and even that eye-watering figure barely scratches the surface, leaving vast swathes of the city unmapped.
Consider Tejgaon, behind the Dhaka Polytechnic Institute. In late June, officers severed the electricity lines to a notorious roadside operation.
Within days, drivers were back at the same spot, hooked right back into the grid. It is a striking picture of an underground industry that operates in plain sight, fuelled by massive demand and patchwork enforcement.
In a narrow Badda alley, 48-year-old Rashid finishes his morning tea before heading to a garage that never sleeps.
Inside, his rickshaw sits alongside half a dozen others, crimson wires dangling like vines from ceiling sockets into exposed batteries. They have been charging uninterrupted for 12 hours.
The financial incentive is staggering. One local garage owner claims powering a dozen rickshaws costs him roughly Tk3,000 a month.
The math tells a very different story.
A dozen rickshaws draw around 518 kilowatt-hours monthly. At standard rates, a residential bill would top Tk5,700, while a commercial tariff would hit nearly Tk9,000.
Meanwhile, drivers pay Tk90 daily for a full charge, generating Tk29,400 a month for the garage. Tapping directly into the grid via an illegal hookup turns an already lucrative operation into pure, untaxed profit.
While utility providers like DPDC stage high-profile raids, conducting 17 disconnection drives in Tejgaon alone, where only 12 official stations exist, the crackdowns remain frustratingly patchy.
In neighborhoods like Basabo, tucked away from main thoroughfares, drivers report that police raids simply never happen. Out of sight, out of mind.
For the drivers, it all comes down to basic survival.
“If your battery dies mid-shift, heading all the way back to your main garage costs time and fares,” explains Titu Mia, a battery-run rickshaw driver in Badda. Instead, drivers pull over wherever power is available, willingly shelling out Tk50 an hour for a quick top-up.
As long as the profits stay high and the enforcement stays sporadic, Dhaka’s shadowy charging network will keep humming along.
Beyond electricity theft
The impact goes far beyond stolen revenue.
Professor Md Ziaur Rahman Khan, a Desco board member and Buet engineering expert, warns that the surge in e-rickshaws is straining the national grid.
“Peak demand used to run from 6 pm to 7 pm, but heavy evening charging has stretched it to 10 pm,” Khan explained. “Unauthorised hook-ups frequently overload transformers, causing them to blow.”
Worse still, inefficient commercial chargers generate severe electrical “harmonics” –disruptive distortions that waste vast amounts of power and accelerate transformer damage.
Illegal charging is no longer just a financial nuisance; it is actively destabilising the energy network.
A vast power appetite
According to the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, Dhaka had 20,987 registered battery-powered rickshaws as of July 2025.
Each draws roughly 1.44 kilowatt-hours daily, putting the official fleet’s daily draw at around 30 megawatt-hours.
However, registered vehicles represent a mere fraction of the truth.
Over 3,00,000 battery-run rickshaws are estimated to roam the capital.
At that scale, their total daily consumption rockets to at least 450 megawatt-hours, roughly a tenth of the capital’s entire electricity supply.
Precisely how many charge illicitly remains unknown, but the disparity between legal and illegal points is staggering.
Nationally, the Ministry of Power has approved just 3,300 stations.
Yet, in December 2025, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police identified 992 unauthorised garages and 48,136 illegal charging points across the city.
Motijheel alone harboured 1,390 illegal points, while Tejgaon contained 234 illicit garages.
Desco Superintending Engineer Mohammad Sayedur Rahman offered a more tempered view, insisting not every garage is unlawful.
Many owners install official Desco meters and settle their bills. Furthermore, because most charging occurs after 10 pm when grid demand dips, he argued the risk of triggering blackouts remains minimal.
When pressed on allegations that garages tap into residential lines, Rahman conceded that complaints exist.
“There are some allegations,” he admitted. “However, we do not believe illegal hook-ups exist on a grand scale. Even so, whenever we receive credible intelligence, we execute raids.”
