Police suspect foul play, await autopsy results

Police suspect foul play in the deaths of a couple and their son, whose bodies were found at a hotel in Dhaka’s Moghbazar on Sunday.

“Initial findings and doctors’ observations suggest that poison caused their deaths. But we need to determine whether it was food poisoning or if someone deliberately mixed poison into their food,” Masud Alam, deputy commissioner of Ramna Division, told The Daily Star yesterday.

A murder case will be filed and further investigation and viscera report will reveal what actually happened, the DC said.

Zakia Tasnim, a doctor at the forensic medicine department at Dhaka Medical College, who performed the postmortem, said, “Police mentioned that the death might be caused by food poisoning, and initial symptoms are making us think the same. Blood and viscera has been collected from the bodies and been sent for further tests. Once we have those reports, we will know the actual reason behind the deaths.”

Talking to The Daily Star, a police official said they suspect “foul play” in the deaths, as no other complaints have been received from customers of the restaurant that supplied the food to the three.

Police are questioning a distant uncle of Monir, who is the caretaker of the victims’ house in Keraniganj, as he was the one who had brought the food from a nearby restaurant.

The victims — Monir Hossain, 48, a Saudi expat; his wife Nasrin Akter Swapna, 38, and their son Nayeem Hossain, 18, who had physical disabilities — had travelled to Dhaka from Ramganj in Laxmipur on Saturday for the boy’s medical treatment.

The couple had two more younger children, who stayed back home in Laxmipur with other family members, said police. Failing to consult a doctor, they checked into a hotel in Moghbazar later that day and were found dead the following day.

According to police, the family members became ill at the hotel, hours after having dinner brought in from a nearby restaurant.

They were taken to a nearby, where doctors declared them dead.

Talking to The Daily Star, Anwarul Islam, assistant manager of the hotel, said the uncle was with the three victims when they checked in and he brought food to them around 5:00pm.

A hotel staff member went to the victims’ room around 10:00pm for room service and found them well.

The next morning, the uncle arrived at the hotel and took the victims, one after the other, to a nearby hospital as they fell ill.

Contacted, MA Hannan, manager of the restaurant from where the food was brought in, said the meal in question was cooked at 4:00pm on Saturday. The victims’ caretaker collected the food about an hour later.

“About 100 people ate from that same lot until 10:00pm. If the food had been poisonous, others would have fallen sick. But no one else reported any issues,” he said.

He said police visited the restaurant around 4:00pm on Sunday and conducted an inspection.

“They took three staff members in for questioning, but released them around 10:00pm,” he added.

The DC said, “We are talking to the uncle to know what happened. We collected CCTV cameras of the hotel and restaurant and are analysing the footage. Many aspects of the incident appear suspicious to us, and we are actively investigating them.”

According to DC Masud Alam, Monir, who arrived in Bangladesh before Eid-ul-Adha, had assets in Bangladesh including two houses in Keraniganj and some long-route buses on the Dhaka-Cox’s Bazar route.

“We are also investigating whether there was any enmity over his property,” the DC said.

Zakir Hossain, a cousin of Monir, said, “We want justice.”