It will take at least two weeks to identify the 14 out of the 19 victims of the deadly Chawkbazar inferno, say police.
In addition to that it’ll take three weeks to identify the remaining five bodies, Additional Deputy Inspector General Sheikh Md Rezaul Haider of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) told the media on Monday (Feb 25).
“We collected muscle samples from 14 bodies and it will take 15 days to identify them,” he said.
“Since the five bodies have sustained more extensive burns, we have collected their bone samples. It will be three weeks before we can extract a sample and then match the DNA,” he added.
A total of 19 bodies have been burned beyond recognition in the Chawkbazar fire on Feb 20 and CID has been collecting DNA samples since Feb 21 in order to identify those.
So far, 38 samples have been collected to match against the 19 bodies.
Meanwhile, 265 DNA samples have been collected from all the 67 dead bodies.
Responding to queries about if a family claims a body later, Haider said, “We have collected samples from all the bodies.”
He said that in such a case should anyone come forward with a court order then the samples will be matched.