DNA profiling ends two families' squabble

A woman whose body was found in an Uttara gutter by police on June 25 was identified by National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory of Dhaka Medical College (DMC) recently, ending the confusion two distraught families were in for around a month.

Descriptions and photos provided by the two families were remarkably similar, prompting police to go for the DNA test, the result of which came in on Sunday, Uttara East Police Station Officer-in-Charge Abu Bakar Siddique told The Daily Star.

The body is of garment worker Juena Begum, 24, who was last seen leaving her father's Dakhshin Khan house for her Cherag Ali abode on June 25 around 3:00pm. Her father Chan Miah said her phone was unreachable after around an hour.

Sources at the DMC morgue, where the body had been kept, said she had been strangled.

On June 28, a government employee, Faruk Alam, claimed it was his wife Sabina, who went missing from her Ashulia residence on June 16.

Hours later, just as he and his family reached the capital's outskirts on way to their family home in Magura with the body, police called them back, saying Chan and Juena's husband Sayeed were also claiming the body on seeing photos taken by police.

Samples were then taken from both families for the DNA test. The whereabouts of Sabina is yet to be known.