ISLAMABAD: A woman and her seven-year-old daughter were found dead in their rented house at F-11/2 sector on Saturday.

Police said a toddler was also found missing from the house.

On suspicion, the police have taken the woman’s husband, a software engineer working with a multinational company, into custody.

The police said the suspect had recently come back from an official visit abroad. The police said apparently the victims were suffocated.

A citizen informed Rescue-15 that robbers had entered a house at F-11/2 and were trapped inside.

When the police arrived at the house, the owner, who lives on the ground floor, said the robbers were in the house on the second floor where his tenants lived.

“The driver of my tenant living on the second floor asked me to inform the police about the robbers. The driver said his employer had told him that he had locked the robbers inside and fled from the house,” he added.

When the police contacted the tenant, he claimed that he had locked the robbers inside and fled the house to save his life.

In reply to a question, he told the police that his family – wife and two daughters – were in Lahore.

The police asked the tenant to reach home and in the meantime broke into the house. However, to their surprise, there were no robbers. On searching, the police found bodies of a woman and a girl in the washroom.

“Both the bodies were lying beside each other. Polythene bags were found wrapped around their faces and necks,” the police said. The bodies were identified as that of Sabin Kashif, 35, and Shanza Kashif, 7.

The family of the house owner told the police that the tenants also had a nine-month-old baby girl who was missing.

The police said after returning to the house, the husband of the deceased woman kept on changing his statements.

First, he told the police that on Friday evening some robbers entered the house but he locked them inside. Later, he claimed: “I escaped from the house at around 9pm on Friday after a man broke into the house.”

The police said there was no sign of a robbery or resistance.

“It seems the woman and the girl were intoxicated before being suffocated,” the police added.

The family hailed from Karachi and had hired the house about four months back.