Man killed in Shahjahanpur amid property dispute; elder sister, brother-in-law arrested

Police recovered the body of a 44-year-old man from a house on Amtala Mosque Lane in North Shahjahanpur yesterday (7 October) and sent it to the Dhaka Medical College morgue for an autopsy.

The victim was identified as Fakhrul Hasan Farhad, said Shahjahanpur Police Station Sub-Inspector Mehedi Hasan.

"Preliminary information suggests that the siblings had been involved in a long-running dispute over land and ownership of the house," Mehedi said.

Police arrested Farhad's elder sister, Nur Afsana Nipa, and her husband, Abdus Samad, in connection with the killing. A murder case has been filed and an investigation is underway, he added.

At the Dhaka Medical College morgue, Farhad's younger sister, Nargis Sultana, said he suffered from heart disease and was paralysed. His wife, Sadia Akter, works at a garment factory, and the couple had no children.

Nargis said the house belonged to the two sisters, but they had allowed Farhad to build a tin-roofed room on the rooftop and live there because of his financial difficulties.

She alleged that Nipa collected gas and water bills from Farhad. As he had been unable to pay the bills since 2017 due to financial hardship and poor health, tensions between them had grown.

According to Nargis, Nipa frequently came to the house, quarrelled with them and demanded that they leave. Since August, she had also been putting pressure on them to vacate the property.

Nargis said Farhad's wife returned home from work around 9:30pm yesterday and found him lying dead on the bed, covered in blood. Her screams alerted neighbours, who rushed to the room.

She claimed CCTV footage from the property showed Nipa's husband leaving the house wearing a helmet and carrying a sharp chapati tucked under his arm.