Bangladesh police have arrested five men over the suspected murder of a Japanese businesswoman who is believed to have been buried in a graveyard under a false name, an officer said Tuesday. Police suspect Hiroe Miyata, 60, who lived in Bangladesh, was interred last month in the capital Dhaka under a fake identity after officers examined records at the Muslim graveyard.
Authorities began investigating after the woman's mother in Japan reported her missing to the Japanese embassy in Dhaka on November 19. "We are treating this as a murder" investigation pending a post-mortem to determine cause of death, one police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Five men who worked closely with Miyata were arrested late on Monday and remanded in custody by a Dhaka court for further questioning, the officer said. Another police official said the woman had been living and working in Dhaka for the last 10 years. "She died in mysterious circumstances," the official, who also declined to be named because of the preliminary nature of the case, told AFP, saying the woman was buried under a Muslim name.