A Dhaka court has ordered police to interrogate The Daily Star Executive Editor Syed Ashfaqul Haque and his wife Tania Khandaker at the jail gate in relation to the death of their 15-year-old housemaid.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Dhaka Sultan Sohag Uddin issued the order after the duo was hauled up in court on Wednesday.
Sub-Inspector of Mohammadpur Police Station Nazmul Hasan, who is investigating the incident of death, applied to the court to grant them permission to question the two keeping them in their custody for five days while the defense lawyer applied for bail. The court, however, turned down both of their pleas.
On Wednesday morning, domestic worker Preeti Uran’s father Lukesh Uran lodged a case accusing the couple of causing death by negligence.
On 6 February, the teenage maid who hails from Mittinga Village under Kamalganj Upazila in Maulvibazar died after falling from the ninth floor of a residential building in the city’s Mohammadpur area. Preeti worked at the flat of Ashfaqul Haque, a resident of that building.
Ashfaqul told the media that they were sleeping at the time of the incident. Later, he woke up and found out that Preeti was lying on the ground floor of the house. According to the police inquest report, the victim fell on a nearby tin-roofed house through the opening of the windowpane.