Victim of Bangladesh garment factory tragedy commits suicide

A female garment worker committed suicide in Bangladesh Friday, nine months after she suffered a serious head injury in the country's worst industrial disaster, police said.

The body of 27-year-old Salma, who uses one name, was found hanging by a scarf at her home in the Bamner Tek neighbourhood of Dhaka where she had been living for the last few months after being discharged from hospital, police inspector Mostofa Hossain told AFP.

Salma was rescued from the ruins of the Rana Plaza garment factory compound in April last year, four days after the nine-storey building collapsed with the loss of at least 1,135 lives.

She was treated in hospital for several months after suffering a serious head injury but Hossain said her suffering continued after she was discharged.

"After she was released from the clinic, she would regularly complain of terrible headache," the spokesman said.

"Neighbours saw her banging her head on the wall as she did not have money to buy medicine," he added.

Police said initial investigations indicated that she had committed suicide as the body bore no injury marks.

It was the first suicide by a survivor of the disaster which highlighted the appalling safety conditions in the Bangladeshi garment industry, a mainstay of the economy.