4 of a family found dead

The crime scene unit of CID collecting evidence at a flat in Kadampur of Keraniganj, where a couple and their two children were found dead yesterday. Photo: Rashed Shumon

A couple and their two children were found dead inside their rented flat in South Keraniganj on the outskirts of the capital yesterday.

On information, police recovered the bodies of the husband and wife, aged about 35 and 28, their seven-year-old son and two-year-old daughter around 10:00am, said sources at South Keraniganj Police Station.

The police suspect that the four, whose names could not be known immediately, had been strangled one or two days ago in a pre-planned way, said Habibur Rahman, superintendent of police, Dhaka. 

The motive behind the killing is yet unknown, he added. 

The father of the children once identified himself as a vegetable trader, local people said. 

The caretaker of the six-storey building, Sohel alias Sumon, who first stumbled upon the bodies while seeking to collect the rent, was detained by the police to record his statements, the SP said.

The tenants had not paid the rent since they moved into the flat on the first floor two months ago. Sohel, who stays outside the building at night, went to the flat on Tuesday morning to find the door padlocked. He again went there that afternoon and found the situation unchanged, police quoted him as saying.

Yesterday morning the caretaker saw the door unlocked but latched from outside.

As he entered the two-bedroom flat, he smelt a stench and saw the body of the male beneath a bed.

The victim was gagged and his hands and legs were tied behind his back.

The bodies of the mother and the children were found covered in a mattress in a corner of the same room.

Police sent the bodies to Sir Salimullah Medical College morgue for autopsies.

Hasina Begum who has been living in the adjacent flat for four years said she had found the victims' main door padlocked and the lights off inside the flat most of the time. 

While visiting the flat, the Daily Star correspondent saw nothing but a bed and a clothes rack. There were no kitchen utensils or cooking materials.

Two men and two women in burqa were seen with the family when they brought their furniture to the place, Hasina said.

“Those two women were again seen about two weeks ago with the children's mother when she took her daughter to my grocery store to buy her potato chips,” said Dulal whose shop is close to the building.

The family never interacted with people in the neighbourhood. They used to go out early in the morning and return late at night, local people said.

Akkas, a local auto-rickshaw driver, had talked to the caretaker on behalf of the family before they rented the flat, as the building owner, Shamsu Mia, lives abroad, Dulal said.

The previous tenant of the flat, Rafique, was also known to the deceased and the children's father used to treat him as a nephew, he added.

A team of Criminal Investigation Department collected evidence from the scene.

The police are searching for Akkas to get details about the deceased couple, said Jamaluddin Mir, officer-in-charge of South Keraniganj Police Station.

People close to the victims might have killed them, he added.