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Published : 23 Jun 2026, 01:47 AM
Bound by a Bargain
A fatal ‘price tag’: The parents claim the 9-year-old was killed after they tried to bring her home and repay a disputed Tk 10,000 fee
Employers imprisoned: A Dhaka court has rejected bail and jailed a senior engineer and his wife over the domestic worker’s suspicious death
Unanswered questions: The employers claim the child fell accidentally, but her family found her body covered in severe, brutal injuries
Before dawn on Friday, the lifeless body of 9-year-old Rikta Moni lay beneath an 11-storey building on Road 9/A in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi.
The child, employed as a domestic worker barely a month earlier, had travelled from a poor village in Sunamganj with the promise of a better life. By sunrise, she was dead.
Her employers insist she fell accidentally.
Her parents say she was murdered.
And at the centre of the allegations is a sum of Tk 10,000 -- money they claim stood between them and bringing their daughter home.
On Monday, a Dhaka court rejected bail petitions filed by the apartment’s occupants, Power Development Board Additional Chief Engineer Sabibur Rahman and his wife Farah Nusrat Borno, and sent them to jail.
The couple had been arrested on Saturday in connection with a murder case filed by Rikta’s father Shahin Mia. Police had earlier secured a two-day remand for interrogation.
Yet despite the arrests, investigators have not publicly disclosed what caused the child's death.
A Child from a Struggling Family
Rikta was the second of five children -- four sisters and a brother -- born to day labourer Shahin of Nijgaon village in Sunamganj’s Salna.
According to the case statement, she was recruited through two intermediaries.
A local acquaintance, Gazibur Rahman, first took the child and handed her to another man, Ayub Ali. Ayub then placed her in the Dhaka home of Sabibur and his wife.
In exchange, Ayub allegedly received Tk 10,000 from the couple.
Speaking to reporters, Shahin said he agreed to send his daughter away only because he believed she would be better off than she was in their impoverished household.
Rikta began working in the apartment about a month ago for a monthly salary of Tk 4,000.
But the arrangement quickly unravelled.
“She Kept Crying”
While working in Dhaka, Rikta spoke with her parents several times by phone.
Those conversations left them distressed.
“She kept crying,” Shahin Mia said.
Concerned, he contacted the employer and asked to bring his daughter home.
According to him, Farah responded that Tk 10,000 had been spent to bring Rikta into the household and that the money would have to be repaid before she could leave.
Shahin says he agreed.
The family planned to collect Rikta on Jun 19.
She died before they could arrive.
“Gazibur told me he would place my daughter in a good home,” Shahin said.
“Later my wife spoke to Rikta on a video call. She was crying and begging to be taken back.
“I spoke to the madam. She said, ‘Do you think this is a lawless place where you can take her whenever you want? Ayub Ali took Tk 10,000 for her. Bring Tk 10,000 if you want her back.’
“We were supposed to bring her home on Friday. Before that, on Thursday, they killed my daughter.
“We are poor people. I want justice for her murder.”
Rikta’s mother, Majeda Begum, echoed the accusation.
“They emptied my chest,” she said.
“I wanted to see my daughter, but they would not let me. When I saw her on video call, she was crying. I understood she was not living peacefully there.
“They told us she was sick, that she had dysentery and stomach pain. When we rushed there, we learned she was dead.
“They killed my daughter brutally. Her arm was broken. I want justice.”
The Final Hours
Shahin says he noticed swelling on Rikta’s face during a video call about a week before her death.
When he asked whether she was being physically abused, he alleges that Farah took the phone away from the child.
He again asked intermediary Ayub to return her. Ayub, he says, repeated the demand for Tk 10,000.
Then came a phone call at about 7am on Friday.
Gazibur informed him that Rikta had been admitted to Uttara Bangladesh Medical College Hospital suffering from diarrhoea.
Majeda and Gazibur rushed there and called Farah, who asked them to wait. Shortly afterwards, her phone was switched off.
Two hours later, Ayub called and said Rikta was actually at Bangladesh Medical College Hospital in Dhanmondi.
When they arrived, the child was already dead.
Her body lay inside an ambulance.
Majeda says she examined her daughter there and found her left arm shattered, with bone protruding through torn flesh. She also noticed multiple injury marks across the body.
A Dhaka Metropolitan Police statement issued on the day of the incident similarly said the child had injury marks on different parts of her body and had been found with a broken left arm.
The defence, however, disputes the allegations.
Lawyer Akhtar Ali Sheikh said the couple told him they had been asleep when the incident occurred.
“They said CCTV footage showed the girl taking a pillow from the room and then going to the balcony,” he said.
The lawyer argued that investigators lacked concrete evidence linking the couple to murder.
“There is no specific allegation against them,” he said. “A murder case has been filed directly, yet there is no proof.”
Repeated calls to Dhanmondi Model Police Station chief Muhammad Saiful Islam and investigating officer Sub-Inspector Shahnewaz went unanswered.
For Rikta’s family, however, the unanswered question is far simpler: Why did a 9-year-old who was supposed to return home end up dead beneath an apartment building instead?
