Wife kills kid, herself to go beyond humiliation
A woman committed suicide after killing her baby girl in the capital’s Nadda yesterday, failing to withstand the humiliation by people her husband had “cheated.”
Sarjina Akhter, 30, slit open the throat of her one-and-a-half-years-old daughter Anifa Akhter before hanging herself from a ceiling fan of her house, family members said.
Anisur Rahman, Sarjina’s husband, took sums of money from several people promising them jobs abroad, Sarjina’s sister Mousumi Akhter told The Daily Star.
Sarjina, a commerce graduate, had to put up with insults by those who gave the money, she added.
Neighbours said people used to come to the house in groups almost every day and yelled at her demanding their money back.
Just two days before the incident, Anisur left the house for Comilla for work. Police found his telephone switched off following the incident.
The incident left Sarjina’s whole family shell shocked. At her parents’ house, this correspondent found her father sitting lost while her mother kept fainting.
According to Mousumi, Anisur asked her mother over the phone to go to Sarjina’s house close to that of their, as he could not reach Sarjina over the phone around 7:30am.
Her parents then rushed to the house and banged on the door and called her number repeatedly in vain.
The house owner asked a boy to climb up her window to have a look inside.
Looking, the boy screamed and said Sarjina was hanging from a ceiling fan and the body of the kid lay on the bed.
The girl was killed with a kitchen knife which was found by the body, witnesses said.
On information, Badda police reached the spot and cut open the steel door and recovered the bodies from her bedroom around 10:30am. The bodies were sent to Dhaka Medical College Morgue for autopsies.
Mahbubur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Badda Police Station, said they were preparing to file a case against Anisur on charges of provoking suicide.
Sarjina and Anisur married three and a half years ago. Six months into the marriage, Anisur forced her to quit her job at a healthcare centre.
“Before the marriage, Anisur claimed to be an assistant registrar of Prime Asia University at city’s Banani. But in a few months after the marriage, we found him jobless,” said Mousumi.
Sarjina’s parents used to give money for her family. Last month, they gave Tk 20,000 for her treatment, family members said.
In July last year, Farzana Kabir Rita, her 12-year-old son Ishrat Kabir Pabon and 10-year-old daughter Raisa Rashmi Payel committed suicide by taking sedatives in the capital’s Jurain.
Rita killed herself after her husband Rashed married another woman.
-With The Daily Star input
