A woman and her daughter were stabbed to death, allegedly by their house help, at their apartment in the capital’s Mohammadpur area Monday morning.

The deceased are Laila Afroz, 48, and her daughter Nafisa Binte Aziz, 15, according to the police.

Only the victims were staying in the apartment at the time of the incident, while Nafisa’s father, Azizul, a teacher at an English-medium school at Uttara, was at his workplace, family members said.

The police said that Azizul told them that he left home early in the morning, returned home at about 11:00am after finishing his duties at his workplace, and found his wife and daughter lying in a pool of blood.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s deputy commissioner for Tejgaon Division, Ibne Mizan, said that the incident occurred at about 10:00am at the apartment near Dhaka Residential School and College on Shahjahan Road at Mohammadpur.

Quoting the victims’ family members, he said that the house help of the family might have killed them.

DC Mizan said that CCTV footage showed that the house help, who had joined the work only four days ago, walked out of the building after 10:00am.

Laila died on the spot, while her daughter died while undergoing treatment at the hospital, he said.

‘The family said that valuables were missing from the home and the locks of the drawers were broken. The police are investigating the motive behind the murders,’ he said.

He said that efforts were on to nab the domestic worker and added that they were looking into the matter from different angles.

The police official said that filing a case in connection with the incident was in process.