Police recovered the hanging body of a schoolgirl from her house in Bhandaria upazila of Pirojpur on Tuesday.
The deceased was identified as Mahira Akter, a Class-X student of Bhandaria Thana Girls' Secondary School and daughter of Md Alamgir Hossain, a retired librarian of the Department of Soil, Water and Environment at Dhaka University, of Madhya Chinguria village. Alamgir is currently engaged in business in Dhaka.
According to police and locals, Mahira's mother died when she was three years old, after which her father remarried. Mahira subsequently lived with her stepmother.
Locals alleged that Mahira had faced neglect and mental abuse by her stepmother, which they suspected led her to take her own life.
However, her stepmother Sumaiya Akter said Mahira had dinner and went to sleep in her room as usual on Monday night.
She said around 6:00am on Tuesday, she found Mahira hanging from a ceiling fan with a scarf around her neck and informed neighbours, who alerted police. Police later recovered the body and sent it to hospital morgue for autopsy.
Sumaiya also said Mahira had been in a relationship with a Bangladeshi expatriate living in Saudi Arabia, but the relationship ended about two months ago. “The breakup might have prompted Mahira to take her own life.”
Bhandaria Police Station Officer-in-Charge Dewan Jaglul Hasan said they were investigating the matter.