Seven-year-old girl Soma Akhter came to Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue with her aunty as they were looking for the body of her mother Amrita Begum.
Amrita remained missing since the catastrophic fire at Narayanganj food and beverage factory that killed 52 people, mostly workers.
Her family members were considering Amrita dead as firefighters found most of the dead bodies on the third floor where she had been working.
However, the charred bodies sent to DMCH morgue could not be identified as they were beyond recognition.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of police were collecting DNA samples from the relatives in order to identify the victims, though the task was unlikely to be completed before the end of July, said the officials.
Soma came to the hospital to give her sample though with her age it was tough for the little girl to imagine what the test was all about.
Holding Soma on her lap, her aunty Rojina Khatun was crying and sometimes screaming saying “Where will I get her mother now”.
Speaking to The Business Post in front of the hospital morgue, Rojina said that Soma continued to ask her when her mother would return home.
“Her mother told her that she would come back home quickly and she should be very decent without being naughty,” Rojina said, with Soma kept asking her “Please take my mother to home.”
Rojina said she and her sister Amrita worked in separate buildings at the same factory. Her sister Amrita joined the factory last month and her husband is a rickshaw puller.
On the day of the incident, she came down from her factory after hearing of the incident of fire. She saw that many workers were standing in front of the building, but could not find her sister there.
Her sister did not have a mobile phone. Many workers jumped off the building breaking the glass of the window. Rojina said she asked many of them about her sister but none could give her any information.
Rojina said that they also went to US Bangla Hospital, where 25 injured persons were sent initially. Then they rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital in the hope that she would be found there. But they did not find Amrita anywhere.
Later, they contacted local police, who asked them to give DNA samples. They were told only parents, siblings or children could give samples, so they took Soma to hospital, said Rojina.
Like Soma, many other people gathered in front of the hospital morgue to give their DNA samples for identifying their missing person.
Mohammad Selim was among the relatives of missing victims, who had his niece, Shagorika Shayla, 18, without any trace since the catastrophic fire.
“We looked for her many places but could not find any trace,” said Salim, adding that Shagorika had been working on the second floor of the factory.
Police have arrested eight people, including the owner of the factory Sajeeb Group Chairman Md Abul Hashem and his four sons, on charges of murder over the death of the workers.
The fire, which broke out at the factory owned by Hashem Foods Limited, a concern of Sajeeb Group, around 5:30 pm on Thursday, spread rapidly through the six-floor building and continued throughout the night.
A total of 18 firefighting units from Narayanganj and Dhaka were called in to tame the blaze, and they finally managed to bring the fire under control by 12:30 pm on Friday.
Although the fire service put the number of causalities to three on Thursday, the death toll started to rise as soon as firefighters entered the building in search of survivors.
The fire service said that 52 died and 25 injured in this incident.
