Dhaka: A woman is said to have committed suicide by shooting herself at a residential building in the Indira Road area of Dhaka on Sunday.

The deceased is Sofia Khan, in her fifties, wife of Mohammad Mahmud Reza Khan, former secretary of the Liberation War Affairs Ministry.

Gopal Gonesh Biswas, officer-in-charge of Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station, quoting Mahmud Reza Khan said Sofia was a mental patient, and around 5.30pm on Sunday, she shot herself with his gun in their 3-storeyed residential building in the Indira Road part of Sher-e-Bangla Nagar.

Although she was taken to Square Hospital afterwards, doctors there could only declare her death.

On information, police recovered the body from the hospital around 8:30pm and sent it to the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital morgue for autopsy, OC added.

It remains unclear how she gained access to the firearm, given her own mental state as disclosed by his brother although it belonged to her husband.