The locals of Miazan Ostagarh Lane in the Karaya Police Station area found a five-month old baby dead and the parents’ unconscious inside their residence on Monday morning. The parents were admitted to a hospital and the body has been sent for a postmortem examination. After preliminary examination, the police suspect that the incident took place because of accumulated carbon monoxide gas in a suffocated room. “There was no ventilation system inside the room where the incident took place. When we reached the spot, we found a hearth inside the room and the ashes of the coals used. The temperature of ashes was still hot. It appears as if the incident took place due to suffocation in an enclosed room,” an officer of the city police homicide department said.

Sanjay Sheikh, the father of the baby worked at a local shoemaking factory. Last year he married Ruma, a local. They lived at 15 E, Miazan Ostagarh Lane and his in-laws lived in same area.

Local sources said, Sanjay would go to work everyday in the morning. On Monday, when the door of their room was found closed, they shouted his name but got no response so they informed his mother-in-law. “Finally they cut a portion of the door and a boy was sent inside the room who opened the door from inside. But by then the baby had died,” an officer of the Kareya Police Station.

The family would regularly prepare their food in the same room. The question has arisen that why the incident took place only on that particular day.

“We are waiting for the forensic department to send us the reports ,” Champak Bhattacharjee, deputy commissioner, Southeast Division said.