Criminals killed five people, including four women, of two families in Patuakhali and Jamalpur yesterday.

In Patuakhali, police recovered the bodies of three members of a family from their home in Amkhola of Galachipa upazila last night.

The bodies of farmer Delwar Mollah, 55, his wife Parvin Begum, 42, and their adopted daughter Kajli Begum, 14, were recovered around 8:00pm.

The bodies were decomposing and Kajli's head was severed from the body.

Police suspected that they were murdered Tuesday night in a planned manner.

Yesterday evening, a neighbour of Delwar, seeing the door open, went to the house. Failing to get anyone's attention after calling their names from the outside, she along with a few others entered the house and smelt a foul odour. They then called the police, Helal Sikder, a village security guard, told our Patuakhali correspondent.

Talking to The Daily Star, Faruk Hossain, additional superintendent of police in Patuakhali, claimed that Delwar and his family had a land dispute with some of their neighbours, and his nephew was murdered four months ago in this connection.

“We are not sure who killed them and we are considering all the issues,” he said.

In Jamalpur, two sisters were killed in Dewliabari village of Sadar upazila yesterday.

The deceased were identified as Bhabna, 14, a ninth-grader; and Lubna, 10, a fourth-grader.

They were the daughters of Malaysia expatriate Shamim Hossain, and Taslima Begum of the village, police said.

Taslima along with her youngest daughter Ayesha Moni went to her parents' in Jamalpur town on Tuesday and spent the night there.

Bhabna and Lubna were home alone.

When Taslima returned yesterday around 8:00am, she noticed that one of the doors of the house was open. She went inside and found her daughters' bodies lying on the floor, said Rashedul Hassan, officer-in-charge (investigation) of Sadar Police Station, quoting the victims' mother.

Bhabna and Lubna had their throats slit.

Police recovered the bodies and sent them to Jamalpur General Hospital morgue for autopsies, he told our Jamalpur correspondent.

“But we suspect that the girls were killed by someone they knew,” Rashedul said.