"Entering the house I was thinking how I should be with my family but instead I am by myself." These are the desperately sad words spoken by a young 25-year-old man describing returning to his home in Cardiff four of his close family members died while on a trip out of the country.
Losing one family member in this way is difficult enough to comprehend, but Sadiqul Islam and his family have gone through the unthinkable grief of losing four relatives.
Sadiqul was on a trip to Bangladesh in July 2022 with his parents and two younger siblings when there was a Carbon Monoxide leak in the flat they were staying in.
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His father Rofikul Islam, 48, and his brother Mahiqul, 17, died shortly after they were found unconscious at the flat in the Sylhet part of the country on 26 July. Just 11 days later he received the devastating news that his sister, Samira, 20, has also not regained consciousness and had died.
Sadiqul, 25, who has multiple serious health complications which leave him immunosuppressed was then left battling debilitating grief while at the same type trying to keep both physically and mentally strong for his mother Husnara Islam, 45. Husnara was receiving treatment for brain complications after the leak.
Despite her health initially looking to be improving, she sadly died of delayed carbon monoxide poisoning to the brain three months after the incident in October 2022.
Investigating the tragedy, police in Bhad initially opened a murder investigation but subsequently suggested the deaths had been caused by a faulty generator which has leaked Carbon Monoxide into a room where the family were sleeping.
The news of the family's death led to an outpouring of grief in Cardiff, where the family had lived in Riverside for Sadiqul's entire life. His father Rofikul had been a taxi driver in the city for decades and was a much-loved member of the community according to his eldest son.
Sadiqul said that they had travelled to Bangladesh, where his mother's family live, to get a second opinion on his medical condition and perhaps get treatment out there. He had only visited the country a handful of times previously. In 2019, the 25-year-old suffered from ruptured appendicitis.
From this, he also developed gastroparesis and slow chronic transit meaning he is in chronic pain and has to be meticulously careful about the type of food he eats and how he looks after himself. He says that as a result of how long he has been waiting for treatment in Cardiff and his family's concerns, they decided to try abroad.
"We all travelled to Bangladesh due to my medical condition, to get another opinion, just to see how it's going. Because obviously there is a long waiting list with the NHS. I didn't really want to go to Bangladesh but my mother was getting very worried about me.
"As soon as we landed I got myself admitted to a hospital to get some tests done so I was basically unconscious and very drowsy since then. The conditions cause a lot of pain."
The family stayed in Dhaka for a week before travelling to Sylhet. They were staying in a flat and each sleeping in one room. Sadiqul thinks the only reason he was not as affected by the leak was that his family had placed a fan near him as he was very unwell from his ongoing conditions.
"It was just a chance that I was fine. There was a fan in the room and because I was so ill and so vulnerable they put the fan next to me and the smoke was being pushed around away from me but we are not 100% sure. It was a freak accident.
"I can’t remember much but during that night I went to sleep around 10ish because I was really tired due to my health condition. It was really impacting me at that point. I think my family slept around 11/12 o'clock. And then all I can remember is going to sleep and then waking up the day after four o'clock in the hospital, which was very confusing.
"I asked where my mother and father were and one of the nurses told me that my father and my brother were in a different hospital. The police advised everyone not to tell us anything as it could make the whole situation worse. We were already critical and it could affect us severely. My mum and my sister were in the same hospital, they weren't far away from me, just in a different room," he said.
It is thought that both Rofikul and Mahiqul passed away on the spot but the nurses and police were waiting until Sadiul and his mother were strong enough before they told them the news. As a result, they missed their funerals which took place shortly after the deaths.
"My mom was the first person to know. My mum went for a test because when she was unconscious she was sleeping on her arm and it was all numb so she went for a test to see if it was broken and then I believe it was my grandmother or the police that advised her that they had passed away.
And she came back to me crying and everything saying that my father and brother had passed away and they had done the funeral and everything. I was saying ‘What’s going on, what’s happened?’," said Sadiqul.
"I was really, really upset and angry at that point. As you can imagine your father and brother have gone and you haven’t even been able to attend the funeral, nobody has told you anything, I was really confused."
Sadiqul said that despite being heartbroken by this news he was trying to concentrate on being strong for his mother and sister, as well as battling his physical illnesses. As soon as their extended family in the UK heard about the tragedy his uncles, aunty and grandmother rushed to Bangladesh to comfort them.
"At that point, I was really confused and stressed. I didn't really want to think about it. I was trying to concentrate on my mother because if she sees me stressed or upset it would affect her. So I was just trying to concentrate on my mother, sister and me and getting us better.
"A lot of people because we were getting told a lot of different things, a lot of different stories. So we didn't even know ourselves to be honest. But we were more worried about recovering ourselves."
Samira was in intensive care at this point and the family were going through the added stress of not being able to see her. "We were going day by day but it impacted me a lot." Sadiqul required hospital treatment himself but was spared intensive care.
"I was just unconscious and with my illness, I was in pain regardless. My mother was on the drips and she was getting dialysis for a while. My sister was constantly on dialysis and was on life support. We weren’t able to see her at all because we were so weak, even though she was really close it wouldn’t be good to see each other for her and for me."
Sadly, on August 6, around 11 days after the incident, Samira died aged just 20. "I did attend the funeral. I was like, I missed my brother's funeral. I missed my father's funeral. I need to attend my sister's funeral. I need to see her one last time before. They were telling me I wasn’t in any fit condition to go but I was able to slowly walk down to the barrier. I wasn’t in the right state really."
By this point, Sadiqul was focusing on getting his mother well enough so she could return to the UK and Cardiff to get further treatment. He was looking at different hospitals in Bangladesh in the hopes she would be able to at least be strong enough to return. It was then that he was given the devastating news of the full extent of the damage to her brain from the leak.
"All I wanted to do is bring her back to the UK. But due to the condition she was in, she was really critical. They were saying there is no way she will be able to fly out. The hospital advised that she had delayed carbon monoxide poisoning to the brain so they said there could be two possible options, a minor infection to the brain or delayed carbon monoxide poisoning.
"Delayed carbon monoxide poisoning is deadly, she would be critical, but the other thing, the infection, she will recover with time. Unfortunately, it was delayed carbon monoxide poisoning to the brain."
It had now been several weeks since the incident and with his mother receiving specialist care in a hospital in Dhaka, Sadiqul returned to Cardiff as he was running out of his medication and specialist food. He was hoping that his mother would be able to follow him back not long after or he could go back out and help her return. When Sadiqul returned to the UK his mother was under the supervision of her parents and brothers.
"I had to come back as my medication and food were finishing so I came back hoping that I would be able to fly back out. We transferred her to Dhaka she would need special treatment so she could fly back out to the UK but it never came to that. At that point, she was getting more and more vulnerable so we just wanted to ring her back here."
On October 19, he was given the horrific news that his mother, the fourth member of his immediate family had died.
"Everyone was telling me it was not safe for me to go back to Bangladesh but I needed to be there for her, to say goodbye to her. I don’t feel right staying in this country while you guys bury my mother in Bangladesh so I took the next flight out but it was just the funeral at that point. I told them not to do the funeral until I was there."
Sadiqul then faced the reality of returning to his home in Cardiff without his family. The family all lived together and were "very close" which made everything so much more difficult.
"It was really difficult. Just everything would remind me of my whole family. Entering the house I was thinking how I should be with my family but instead, I am by myself. It was so weird.
"It’s hard enough losing one person and I have just lost four. Everyone's trying the way to do whatever they can but obviously, it's not like how my family was here supporting me."
Paying tribute to his loved ones he said: "My Family meant the world to me, they were always happy and full of love. My father was an amazing man he’d always put everyone else first before himself. He was a very well-known person in the Taxi community all the drivers knew him.
"As well as the wider community he’d always had a smile on his face and was a very kind, gentle person. The love he and my family had for me was immense.
"This is why After losing my Family it has been very very difficult for me to continue with my journey, but I guess I’m going to have to be strong and continue my family's legacy and make them proud.
"I've been trying to keep busy trying to keep myself occupied just trying to do something. Because like it's just a lot for me like it's affecting me mentally as well as physically."
A memorial bench has now been placed in Victoria Park, Canton, in memory of his family. Sadiqul says he and his cousins visit regularly to pay tribute and remember their relatives as they cannot visit the graves which are in Bangladesh.
"It was my cousin's idea. We thought it would be a good idea to get a bench started up and get something that reminded us of them and kept them as a memory. It was organized while I was still out in Bangladesh.
Me and my cousins went down to see it after it was all installed we met there together. I go quite a lot, I can’t visit their graves because they are in Bangladesh so I go to the bench to see them, every other week. It's nice to have something there.
"It has been very difficult, very full on but I have had to just take it day by day."
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