DHAKA: An employee at one of Bangladesh’s largest footwear factories suffered a miscarriage in a workplace toilet after she was allegedly refused medical leave, police said Sunday.

Factory worker Hamida Akter, 20, had a miscarriage on Saturday after falling ill during a shift at the Apex Factory, which employs 6,300 people and supplies shoes to Western retailers, police said.

“She was rushed to a local hospital where the doctor declared the baby dead. The baby was about four months old,” senior police officer Mahbub Hossain Kazal told AFP.

Since the incident was first reported in the mass-circulation Bengali daily Prothom Alo, Bangladesh’s High Court had asked a government official to investigate, deputy attorney general Tapash Kumar Biswas said.

“The high court... (asked) the government administrator of the area to investigate the incident and submit a report,” he told AFP.