Sumaiya Akhter, one of the six members of a family injured in a gas explosion at her Uttara flat, passed away yesterday at a hospital ICU.
Sumaiya, 40, succumbed to her burn injuries yesterday around 3:25pm, Dr Rashed Mahmud of the City Hospital said. She had 95% burn injuries. Sumaiya was kept in the ICU and had been unresponsive since the morning, he said.
Sumaiya was shifted to the hospital from Dhaka Medical College Hospital on March 1. Her family members said her situation was deteriorating they shifted her so that she could died keeping her children in front of her.
She died hours after her only surviving son Zarif bin Newaz was taken home yesterday morning.
An audio statement by Sumaiya was released on social media by her cousin on February 29 and subsequently in the news media. In it she described how her neighbours stood by as she and her family members ran down the stairs while burning.
Sumaiya’s husband Shah Newaz, 50, a maintenance engineer at the US embassy in Dhaka, died on February 27 and their other two children, 14-month-old Zayan and 15-year-old Sharleen, died within 12 hours of the explosion on February 26.
Abu Sufian, a relative, said Sumaiya would be buried beside her husband and children at her home village in Barisal.
Family members have alleged that although Shah Newaz informed his landlord as soon as he smelled the gas leakage, the landlord took no measures to fix the problem.