Staff Correspondent

Investigators were waiting for the viscera report to identify the cause of death of a female university, whose father has accused five of her fellow students of raping her.

After conducting the autopsy yesterday, Prof AM Selim Reza, head of forensic medicine department at the capital’s Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College, told reporters that they suspect that the 21-year-old woman may have died due to food poisoning.

However, the actual reason can be known after getting the viscera chemical analysis, he added.

When asked, he said they did not primarily have any evidence of force or rape. They have sent the vaginal swab and DNA sample to lab to know whether she was raped.

The woman died at a private hospital on Sunday, a day after her father filed a rape case with Mohammadpur Police Station accusing five of her fellow students.

Meanwhile, police may seek to exhume the body of an accused in the case -- Arafat, 28 -- who died at City Hospital in Mohammadpur on Saturday, two days after drinking with the same group at a restaurant in Uttara on Thursday.

On that day, another of the group fell sick at the restaurant and left the place immediately. Police said one member of the group had taken alcohol to the restaurant from the airport area. Police are searching for both of them.

According to the case statement, five, including the victim, went to a restaurant in sector-3 of Uttara on Thursday. There, they made her drink alcohol. As she fell sick, they took the girl to one of her friend’s house in Mohammadpur. There the prime accused -- Mortuza Raihan Chowdhury, one of the two arrestees -- raped her.