Bihar triple murder: Illicit relationship of girls’ mother under scanner

Police said there was a possibility that the crime could have been committed with an intention to teach the woman a lesson

Police in Bihar’s Banka district said on Wednesday they were investigating whether the family of the man, who was allegedly in a relationship with the mother of the three girls killed a day earlier, were behind the murders.

The girls were alone at home at the time of the incident as their father worked as a labourer in West Bengal and mother had gone to a village near Jasidih in neighbouring Jharkhand.(AFP File Photo)

A police officer leading the probe, who did not wish to be named, said there was a possibility that the crime could have been committed with an intention to teach the woman a lesson.

Banka superintendent of police Chandan Kumar Kushwaha said the eight people named as suspects by the victims’ mother were related to her alleged paramour. Two of the suspects had been detained by the police for interrogation.

Kushwaha said a three-member special investigation team has been constituted to crack the case. The investigation was underway and the culprits would be nabbed soon, he said.

The SP said the forensic report, on the basis of circumstantial evidence, has corroborated an incident of rape at the place where the victims were murdered. However, the report does not specify whether one or all the three victims were raped.

“It will be premature to say anything convincingly at the moment. We are awaiting the medical reports,” he added.

The bodies of three sisters, aged between 10 and 14 years, were found in their house at a village in Katoria police station area of Banka district, 240 km southeast of state capital Patna, on Tuesday morning.

Police said they were killed with sharp-edged weapons and suspected that the girls were raped before being murdered.

The girls were alone at home at the time of the incident as their father worked as a labourer in West Bengal and mother had gone to a village near Jasidih in neighbouring Jharkhand.

Their bodies were discovered after the mother returned home on Tuesday morning and found the house locked from outside. The neighbours broke open the lock and found the bodies.