Twin daughters killed, wife and 6-year-old son in next room: Chilling details of Kanpur murder case

Shashi Ranjan Mishra after murdering his twin daughters called the police at 4:30 am to report the crime.

It was a usual evening for a family of five, with twin daughters and a son, at their apartment in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur. The family had dinner and went to their rooms to sleep. Mother and the six-year-old son slept in one room, while the twin daughters, 11, went to sleep in another room.

Photo for representation (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

In the morning, the mother received the shock of her life when the cops turned up at the door of their Kidwai Nagar apartment. While she slept peacefully with her son in one room, her husband had murdered their daughters by slitting their throats in another room.

After brutally slaughtering the children, the man, 45-year-old Shashi Ranjan Mishra, dialled the police helpline number to report the crime.

“We received a call on 112 at around 4.30 am from the accused himself,” Kanpur’s deputy commissioner of police (South) Deependra Nath Chaudhary told HT, adding that the motive is yet not known.

As chilling details of the case emerge, the accused's wife, Reshma, said the family had meals together before the father took the children to his room and spoke on the phone for a long time. Watching the CCTV feed from outside, she saw him take one daughter to the bathroom around 2.30 am, return, and switch off the light. She went to sleep and was unaware of the killings until morning.'

Apparently it all happened within two hours as Reshma saw him take one of the daughters to the washroom at 2:30 am on CCTV feed and then the police received the call at 4:30am.

'Hang him now'

The inconsolable mother, Reshma from Bengal's Siliguri, wants her husband to be hanged for murdering his daughters. According to the police investigating the case, the Mishra had grown increasingly unstable after his mother’s death a few months ago. He drank, took sleeping pills, and had been battling depression, especially after his mother's death.

"He had said earlier that he would end his life," she told police, adding that he had even spoken about dying along with the children.

Police said Mishra confessed to mixing sleeping pills into the children's food, rendering them unconscious before strangling them and later slitting their throats with a cleaver he had purchased a day earlier, according to PTI.

Reshma and Mishra got married in 2014 but had grown turbulent over the years and allegedly grew increasingly suspicious and accused her of infidelity and installed CCTVs across the house, PTI reported. It is in one of these CCTV feeds from her room that Reshma saw Mishra take one daughter to the bathroom around 2.30 am, return, and switch off the light. She went to sleep and was unaware of the killings until morning.

She was effectively barred from his room, while the girls mostly stayed with him, and he had told his wife on several occasions to leave with their son and let him raise the daughters alone.

Mishra had been without work for some time now as he had left his job to start a business. Reshma, too, who earlier worked at a beauty parlour, was unemployed.

Police are linking the incident to possible depression or a psychiatric condition. It is being investigated whether he was receiving any psychiatric treatment.