A 14-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with the murder of his two aunts in Dhaka's Shewrapara area, police said on Monday.
The boy was picked up from his maternal grandfather’s house in Ashiar Gagan under Jhalakathi sadar on Sunday, following a tip-off, Detective Branch (DB) Joint Commissioner Nasirul Islam said at a press briefing.
The victims were Mariam Begum, 60, a former official of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA), and her younger sister, Sufia Begum, 52.
Briefing reporters at the DMP media centre, Nasirul said: "The boy left his rented house in Shanir Akhra around noon, telling his mother that he was going for private tuition. Instead, he went to his elder aunt Mariam Begum’s rented flat in West Shewrapara under Mirpur police station in a CNG-run autorickshaw at around 12:50pm."
While his elder aunt was preparing lemon juice for the boy and his other aunt was cleaning dishes on the veranda, he allegedly stole Tk3,000 from a wallet kept near the TV in a room.
When Mariam caught him in the act and scolded him, he stabbed her in the abdomen with a lemon-cutting knife. As she attempted to fight back, he stabbed her again, according to police.
Hearing her screams, Sufia rushed from another room, but the teen stabbed her as well.
He then allegedly took a pestle from the kitchen and struck both women multiple times on the head, killing them on the spot.
He later cleaned the blood from his body in the bathroom, changed his bloodstained clothes with his cousin's jeans and a t-shirt, wore a cap, and locked the main gate of the flat from outside before leaving, said the joint commissioner.
He took a CNG-run auto-rickshaw to Shanir Akhra, discarding the house keys and cap on the road. He paid Tk450 as fare and threw away the remaining stolen notes, as they had bloodstains.
At a local shopping centre, he changed back into his pink panjabi and disposed of the bloodied clothes through a ventilator in a washroom. He also threw his shoes onto an abandoned building near his house.
On Saturday, the day after the incident, he left for Jhalakathi to attend the burial of one of the victims.
The boy had been closely monitoring law enforcement activities and had attempted to evade arrest by moving between locations, said Nasirul.
Finally, detectives identified the boy reviewing footage of the Shewrapara building. Later, they arrested him.
Replying to a question, the joint commissioner said the boy revealed that he had stolen Tk3,000 to buy a cycle.
Further investigation is underway to determine if he was under the influence of drugs or acted on someone’s instructions, he added.
Acting on his confession, police recovered the bloodstained clothes from a sewer near the shopping centre and his discarded shoes from the abandoned building. One of the recovered jeans belonged to his cousin.
