Of them, eight were allegedly tortured to death by their husbands or their family members and the rest 11 committed suicide, according to records with police, NGOs and women's rights activcists.

The death toll from violence against woman in the district was 14 in the previous month. Six of them were killed allegedly by husbands or their families and the rest were incidents of suicide, the records showed.

Torture by husbands or their families forced the victims to commit suicide, police sources said.

Of the murders last month, five were in Kushtia Sadar upazila, two in Khoksa, three in Kumarkhali, five in Bheramara and four in Daulatpur upazila.

Talking to this correspondent, police at the five police stations in the district admitted that death of women from violence increased alarmingly in the district.

As per records, 32 women were killed in previous four months in the district. This was the highest number of death of women in the 10 districts in Khulna division.

Violence against women and deaths are increasing, said a doctor at Kushtia General Hospital where autopsy of victims are done.

In most cases, husbands were responsible for violence leading to death of housewives or incidents of suicide, an official of Mollah Foundation, a research organisation in Khoksa upazila, told this correspondent.

Other family members were also found involved in physically or mentally torturing housewives, he claimed. Demand for dowry was the main reason for torture, he said.

In a number of cases, poverty was behind family feuds leading to torture by husbands, according to findings by Mollah Foundation.

The actual number of deaths from violence would be far more as many incidents were not reported to police deliberately by the victim's relatives and cases were not filed to avoid hassle.

In such cases, police have no alternative to recording unnatural deaths, said a police official in the district.

NGOs working on violence against women said in many cases, victim's families did not lodge case fearing retaliation by the killers and apprehending harassment by police.

"Poor families of victims also want to avoid trouble and spending money on legal battle," said Dewan Aktheruzzaman, executive director of FAIR, an NGO in Kushtia.

There were instances where victim's family even declined to take help when we wanted to extend legal support, Aktheruzzaman said.