A court in northeastern Bangladesh sentenced a woman to 130 years in prison for killing her four daughters because she had no money to feed them, government prosecutors said on Thursday.
Prosecutors told the court the 30-year-old mother, a resident of the remote village of Kodabakspur, hacked to death the four girls before torching the family’s thatched house.
Rashida Begum said she had murdered her children because she was unable to provide them with food.
”I could not bear the sight of my children going to bed hungry,” Begum, the wife of an unemployed farm worker, said after hearing the court verdict on Wednesday.
Judge Shahiduz Zaman handed down the sentence after a trial that lasted almost three years in the farming town of Mymensingh, 145 kilometres northeast of the capital Dhaka.
Begum was convicted of killing her four daughters Sabina, Kulsum, Aklima and Taslima, whose ages ranged between four and 10 years.
Police arrested Begum a day after the gruesome incident on September 17, 1999. – Sapa-DPA