Ajman: Three weeks after losing their daughters to suspected pesticide poisoning, small-time garments factory owner Habibullah Miah, 51, and his wife, Sufiya Akhtar, 27, are struggling to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives.
“I don’t know what to do now. We have no plans for the future. No words in the world can express what we feel. Everything’s pointless,” said the heart-broken father as he sat disconsolately in the living room of his friend’s two bedroom apartment where he and his wife have been seeking solace since the twin tragedy struck.
“We can’t bear the sight of our old apartment without them. Old memories haunt us. The only time we went there was to get our clothes and essentials,” says mum Sufiya, wiping her tears from behind the curtains of the next room.
second marriage
As fate would have it, Habib had tied the knot a second time only to extend his family. “My first wife of 10 years couldn’t bear a child, so I married again to have kids and now they are all gone,” says the longtime Bangladeshi expat who married Sufiya in December 2008.
Hafsa Sumaiya and her seven-month-old sister Sawda Habiba died within a few hours early this month after reportedly inhaling fumes of banned deadly pesticide apparently used by the family next door.
The man responsible is currently in the custody of Ajman Police, facing trial while the last rites of the children were performed last Thursday.
However, those who knew the girls remain in a state of shock. “She accompanied her father and me to the Friday prayers. When I heard she and her sister had passed away I couldn’t believe my ears. She would come and ask for chocolates in her sweet distinctive style. She hadn’t even completely learnt how to speak,” recollects local grocer Abdul Rehman of three-year-old Hafsa Sumaiya.
Suspected poisoning?
“We first suspected it was a case of food poisoning, but then why would only the kids and the mother be affected and no one else?” wonders Mohammad Ibrahim whose family dined at a local Sharjah eatery the night before the incident with Habibullah, his wife and kids.
“I had gone to see off a friend at the airport when at around 2am my wife called to say that she and the daughters were unwell and vomiting profusely. I rushed back immediately and took them to the Khalifa Hospital where the three of them were put on saline drips,” Habibullah said.
They were discharged in the morning – all of them visibly better. “Little did I know that the signs were deceptive,” rues Habibullah. “In hindsight, the hospital should have done better. The doctors should have at least found out why they fell ill in the first place,” says his friend Ibrahim.
Things took a nastier turn later that day when the elder sister fell ill again in late afternoon, this time giving the father only enough time to drive her to the nearest GMC Hospital. Infant Sawda too was later admitted at the behest of other family members gathered there.
“It was only after the elder one’s death that they told us it could have been due to pesticide poisoning. Even they couldn’t diagnose the problem in time,” complains the helpless father. The hospital declared Hafsa dead at 7.55pm on June 1 while her sister officially breathed her last seven minutes past midnight.
According to the death certificate issued by the Ministry of Health’s Department of Preventive Medicine Department their deaths were caused by ‘a sharp decline in (blood) circulation and heart’.
Hafsa was born in Dhaka on March 10, 2010 and Sawda was born a couple of years later on January 20, 2012 at the GMC Hospital. “How ironic that she had to die in the same place where she was born. I had hoped at least she would survive,” says Habibullah. He only hopes this is never repeated ever again. “I pray that even my worst enemies don’t suffer the fate we did.”
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