Death of 10-yr old house help: Elderly woman accused

dead body

The elderly woman accused of killing a 10-year-old house help made some contradictory claims about the cause of the girl’s death, police said.

During her one-day remand at Shahjahanpur Police Station yesterday, Farhad Badhan Mou, 69, told officers that the girl died because she was sick.

When the officers asked her about the numerous injury marks on the girl’s body, she said the girl’s elder sister, who also worked at the house, tortured her.

Mou was arrested on Monday, hours after police recovered the body of the victim from a hearse parked near a hospital in the capital’s Moghbazar.

Shah Alam Md Akhtarul Islam, additional Deputy Commissioner (Sabujbagh Zone) of police, said it seemed that the girl was killed two days before the decomposing body was found.

Sub-Inspector Rafiqul Islam, who has been investigating the case, said he learnt from people in the neighbourhood that in recent weeks, they frequently heard the girl crying in the first floor of the flat.

Some of the neighbours told the officer that Mou would loudly ask the girl to eat properly and say innocuous things whenever they knocked on the door to see what was happening.

He added that Mou’s behaviour was strange and her way of living seemed unusual.

She told interrogators that she did not have any earnings to pay the rent of Tk 16,000 and cover other expenses and a lawmaker from the capital used to give her money.

She also told police that she was from Sri Lanka and she came to Bangladesh in 1974 after marrying a Bangladeshi man. building, neighbours, and grocery store owners said they have never seen her leave the flat in the last three years.

SI Rafiqul said he found that Mou had CCTV cameras installed on the street in front of the building and on the staircase. The house staff and the caretaker of the building used to buy essentials for her, he said.

Rafiqul also said the flat was small and a substantial amount of space was taken up by five refrigerators.

The caretaker and a security guard told police that Mou seemed to buy one year’s worth of groceries at a time.  

Rafiqul added that he found numerous toy animals and dolls at the flat.

She has been living alone in a two-room flat in the capital’s Shantibagh for the last 17 years. Her only companions were the victim and her 14-year-old elder sister.

The victim’s father told police that Mou on Monday informed him about his daughter’s death and offered him Tk 70,000 and a plot of land in Savar if he agreed to bury her without telling anyone.

He then called 999. Officers first interrogated her and then recovered the body. - Special Correspondent