Jannatul Ferdous and Khadizatun Mim. Photo: Collected

In the dead of Tuesday night, the father tied his two sleeping daughters and himself with a bare electric cable, lay beside them and connected the wire to a socket. All three were found dead yesterday.

Babul Miah, 40, had been suffering from depression and was heavily burdened with debts he could not pay, said residents in the capital's Kamrangirchar where he lived for six years.

Around 1:00pm yesterday, neighbours saw through the open window the bodies of Babul and his two daughters -- Jannatul Ferdous, 11, and Khadizatun Mim, 9 -- with an electric wire tied around them. They then broke open the door, disconnected the cable and called the police.

Locals found the cable stripped off its plastic cover. The multi-socket where the wire was connected was on Babul's chest.

Sheikh Mohsin Alam, officer-in-charge of Kamrangirchar Police Station, said Babul was once an electrician.

He used to live with his wife and two daughters in a room on the first floor of a wooden house at Maddha Rasulpur. After a feud, his wife left him early this month, neighbours said. 

“He had an unhappy marriage and had many financial worries,” said Subarna Akhter, a next-door neighbour.

Subarna, also daughter-in-law of the house owner, was the first to spot the bodies.

“For the last four months, he could not pay the monthly rent of Tk 2,200,” said Asma Begum, the house owner.

Babul had borrowed Tk 50,000 from a local NGO and was supposed to pay back Tk 1,200 every week. In addition, he borrowed about Tk 50,000 from locals, neighbours said.

“I think he had been failing to pay the installments as he recently stopped running the tea stall he opened a few months ago at Kamrangirchar,” Asma said.

Asma lived in two rooms below Babul's room and they often heard Babul and his wife quarreling.

“Sometimes, I even heard sound of scuffles and beatings from upstairs,” she said.

Police reached the spot around 2:30pm and sent the bodies to Sir Salimullah Medical College morgue for autopsies.