Before going broke...

While police suspect the death of a woman and her three children in Turag was triggered by financial hardship, locals say the family used to live an affluent life once and went broke after losing Tk 50 lakh in an MLM business.

Most of the neighbours, however, came to know about the plight of Mostafa Kamal only after his wife, Rehena Parvin, 35, reportedly hanged herself after strangling her daughters Nusrat, 13, and Arisha, 9, and nine-month-old son Saad, at their house on Friday.

Police say she might have committed suicide out of frustrations arising from financial hardship, but they are also looking into land and business issues.

Neighbours said a decade ago, Kamal used to donate, but they heard he had been relying on borrowings from relatives for quite a while.

“Whenever there was any cultural or sporting event, we would collect donations for him because he was a solvent businessman at that time,” said Babul Hossain, a neighbour.

Echoing him, another neighbour, Mohammad Kamal, said Mostafa was also known as a good person. “So we used to invite him as chief guest.”

Although Kamal is a business partner of Mostafa at their recent enterprise, Youth Welfare and Small Traders Association, he was never aware of his financial plight.

Mostafa worked at the association as an accountant.

“We, seven partners, launched the association investing Tk 20,000 each around seven months back and decided to pay him after making profits,” Kamal said.

When asked why he does not search for a job again, Mostafa told Kamal that he was having problems in the eye and was not able to perform like earlier.

In 2006, Mostafa quit a job at a buying house in Chittagong and got involved in multi-level marketing (MLM) and land businesses.

His hard days started when he lost Tk 50 lakh in the MLM business in 2012, Mostafa told reporters at Dhaka Medical College Hospital on Friday.

After that his only income source was a portion of house rents and financial assistances from relatives, said Samsul Alam, his brother-in-law.

The 48-year-old built 16 tin-roof rooms on his father's 4- katha land in the capital's Turag. His family started living in three rooms and three others were used by one of his sisters, Kohinoor. The rest were rented out.

Rehena's relatives said two years ago, Mostafa used to collect Tk 25,000 as rents and could hardly spend Tk 5,000 to meet his family expenses as he had to pay the utility bills and give the rest to his sisters.

But things worsened when his sisters took control of the house to collect rents and started pressing him to vacate the rooms for failing to repay them loans, they said.

To support her family, Rehana regularly collected money from her brothers and sisters, said his brother Shamsul. Mostafa was aware of it but never took any step, he said.

After the deaths, Shamsul filed a murder case with Turag Police Station, accusing Mostafa and his sister Kohinoor.

Shafiqur Rahman, inspector (investigation) of Turag Police Station, said Mostafa's sister Kohinoor admitted that they were not on good terms with Rehana, but she denied asking her sister-in-law to vacate the house.

Talking to reporters at Dhaka Medical College Hospital on Friday, Mostafa said two influential men, who had taken Tk 50 lakh from him to invest the amount in the MLM business, were not repaying the money; instead they were threatening him.

He suspected the two might have been behind the deaths of his wife and children. He, however, did not disclose the two names.

Inspector Shafiqur Rahman said they were investigating the case keeping in mind all aspects -- financial crisis, family feud over land, and business issues.