Teenage siblings commit suicide

Two teenage siblings allegedly committed suicide by hanging themselves at their residence in the capital's Uttara on Monday night.

The deceased are Chirasree Zaman, 18, an A-level student and her ninth-grader brother Mohammad bin Alim, 14.

They were found hanging from the window grills in their respective rooms with their feet touching the ground. One end of both the ropes was tied with chairs, said Elias Bepari, caretaker of the building.

The flat is located on the fourth floor of a 10-storey building on Garib-e-Nawaz avenue at sector-13 in Uttara.

The caretaker said their mother Jayasree Zaman talked with the daughter over phone around 9:30pm. Later, she returned home and found her children hanging at around 12:00 midnight, he said.

Although police suspected these to be cases of suicide, they were yet to confirm without seeing the autopsy reports.

Referring to a six-page note recovered from the flat, police further said frustration might be the reasons behind the siblings' taking their own lives.

"The pages were written in English, like literature full of allegories which denotes a frustrating living," said Iqbal Hossain, deputy commissioner (Uttara division) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

Quoting Jayasree, the DC said the note was written by Alim, a student at the Belmont International School.

Police reached the spot around 1:00am after the mother informed them over the phone and recovered the bodies, added the DC.

Elias said Jayasree, who works with Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS), returned home at around 11:15pm and found the main door locked from inside and called him for help.

The caretaker later entered the room through the backdoor of the balcony and opened the main door. He saw the lights on at the son's room and opened the main door only.

"When I was getting down the stairs, I heard madam [Jayasree] screaming. I rushed to the flat and found her in her son's room. He was hanging from the grill there," he said.

"About 20 minutes later, she looked for her daughter in the other room and found her too hanging," added the caretaker.

Victims' aunt Tilottoma Zaman, a teacher at Scholastica's Uttara branch, said her sister had been raising the siblings alone after her husband Alimul Haque left the family seven years ago. Alimul has been living in China after marrying another woman, she added.

The bodies were buried at the Azimpur graveyard yesterday afternoon following autopsy at Dhaka Medical College morgue.