Police have recovered the bodies of a mother and her daughter from a rented apartment in Kaliarjuri, Comilla city. Around 2 a.m. on Sunday (September 7), officers found the bodies of Tahmina Begum (50) and her daughter Sumaiya Afrin Riking, a third-year honors student at Comilla University.
CCTV footage from a nearby school shows an unidentified man wearing a cap and dressed in traditional panjabi-pajama entering the flat at 8:08 a.m. on Sunday.
At 11:22 a.m., the man is seen leaving the apartment, only to return again 12 minutes later. After that, he was not seen leaving until 1:35 p.m. When the school closed for the day, the CCTV cameras were also turned off, making it unclear when he eventually left.
Neighbors suspect that the man seen in the footage might have been a family acquaintance, possibly a traditional healer (“kobiraj”), who often visited the home.
The victims’ elder son, a practicing lawyer in Dhaka, returned home around 11:30 p.m. and found the door unlocked. Inside, he saw his mother and sister lying on the bed. When they did not respond, he waited for his younger brother to arrive. Together they checked and confirmed that both had died.
Tahmina Begum was the daughter of the late Shamsul Haque of North Kaliarjuri. Her husband, Nurul Islam, a former court accountant, passed away last year. Since then, she had been living in the apartment with her two sons and daughter.
Mahinul Islam, Officer-in-Charge of Comilla Kotwali Model Police Station, said that police recovered the bodies and sent them to Comilla Medical College Hospital morgue. “This is a mysterious case. We have collected all evidence, including the CCTV footage. Whether this was a murder or death caused by other reasons will be determined after the autopsy. The investigation is ongoing,” he added.