Munna Bhagat used to work as an assistant for his uncle Jatan Kumar Lal, who is a morgue attendant at the Suhrawardy Hospital.
The 20-year-old used the opportunity to satisfy his perverted desires and in the name of guarding corpses prior to post-mortem he used to engage in sexual intercourse with them, police said.
He had been working at the Suhrawardi Hospital morgue for the last four years and has confessed to the CID about having sex with at least six dead bodies of women in the last one year.
Conveniently he even lived beside the morgue along with a few other morgue attendants.
Munna had recently gone missing and his phone was switched off. So, his roommates filed a general diary at the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station on Thursday.
He was arrested by the Crime Investigation Division (CID) of police on Friday.
Police produced him before a Dhaka metropolitan magistrate later in the day, when he made a confessional statement under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). Magistrate Mamunur Rashid ordered to send him to jail after recording his statement.
According to the CID, Munna used to have sex with the dead bodies of women who were between the ages of 12 and 20.
Regarding the allegation against Munna having sexual intercourse with dead women, his uncle Jatan Lal Kumar said: "Munna used to smoke marijuana or do drugs from time to time. But I cannot believe he would do such a thing.”
How CID identified him
In 2012, the first DNA lab of Bangladesh Police was set up. Since the establishment of the lab, the CID has stored DNA tests and profiles of all the evidences sent by the court, including those found in rape and murder incidents.
From March last year to August this year, the forensic medicine department of Suhrawardy Hospital sent several samples to the CID.
In one such case, they were trying to create a complete DNA profile from male semen found in the high vaginal swab (HVS) of a dead woman.
A senior CID official, preferring anonymity, said: "We searched the CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) software. The DNA sample was repeatedly matching with the DNA profile obtained in several incidents in Mohammadpur and Kafrul police stations. Which was pretty unusual.”
“It was assumed that a person had raped and killed a few victims or they had committed suicide after rape. However, there were no signs of injuries on the bodies,” said the official.
He added: "We then thought that in one way or another, a person's perverted intentions had been satisfied by the bodies of the victims."
There were six such cases in total. After each of the six bodies were brought to the morgue, an autopsy and DNA analysis was performed to determine the cause of death.
All of these bodies were left in the morgue for autopsy, he added.
The CID official said there were several morgue attendants who were on guard there. But in the case of these particular corpses, a specific morgue assistant was always on duty.
“We initially suspected him. On the pretext of taking him out and talking, we collected his DNA in the guise of drinking tea. When it was brought to the CID lab and analyzed, it matched with the DNA from those six bodies,” said the official.
“Then we were 100% sure and thus launched an operation to arrest him. The accused anticipated danger and fled.”
