Body of 75-yr-old recovered from Mirpur

Police recovered the body of a 75-year-old woman from an apartment in the capital’s Mirpur on Sunday night.

The deceased, Nurjahan Begum, lived with her daughter, Fatima Nasrin Sultana, on the fourth floor of a five-storey building in Block C of Mirpur 6.

Pallabi Police Station Officer-in-Charge Md Hasan Basir said they recovered the body after receiving a call on the national emergency hotline -- 999.

According to the OC, the victim has three sons -- one a joint secretary, one a teacher at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, and the other living in Canada.

Since the recovery of the body, allegations of severe neglect by her children have surfaced across the media.

Sub-Inspector Shamsur Rahman of the police station said that Fatima’s husband, who was also a university teacher, passed away seven to eight years ago. She has no children of her own.

When police and locals visited, the apartment, particularly the victim’s room, was found in an extremely squalid and unhygienic condition.

The incident has sparked outrage among neighbours.

Around 10 to 12 locals were seen protesting in front of the building yesterday, demanding a thorough investigation and punishment for the deceased’s children.

Speaking to The Daily Star, Syed Mohammad Hasan Palash, a neighbour and local mosque committee leader, said some youths went to the local mosque to fetch a funeral bier after Maghrib prayers on Sunday.

When asked who had passed away, they evaded the question, prompting Palash and a few others to follow them to the apartment.

“We had to force our way in.”

Describing the scene, Palash said the woman’s room was reeking of a foul odour, completely dark, and littered with garbage. A video recorded by him showed the floor blackened with accumulated dirt and waste scattered all around.

He alleged that the body appeared to have been decomposing for over a week and that the elderly woman had apparently been starved and deprived of basic medical treatment.

The OC, however, said the daughter claimed her mother died on Sunday and that she had given her a packet of food just the day before.

Following an autopsy at Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital on Monday, morgue sources corroborated the daughter’s timeline. They told this newspaper that the body was relatively fresh and had not undergone significant decomposition.

Morgue sources suspect a localised decay occurred because the bedridden woman had been lying on the same side for a prolonged period.

Following the autopsy, police handed the body over to the family.

When this correspondent visited the Mirpur house yesterday, no one answered the door despite repeated ringing of the doorbell. The victim’s daughter and sons also could not be reached for comment by phone despite repeated attempts.