Issueless woman kills newly-born niece on tantrik’s ‘advice’

Blinded by the desire to have a child, a woman allegedly killed her 17-day-old niece on the alleged advice of a tantrik in a village in Abohar, a sub-division of Fazilka district.

Blinded by the desire to have a child, a woman allegedly killed her 17-day-old niece on the alleged advice of a tantrik in a village in Abohar, a sub-division of Fazilka district.

As per information, the newlyborn daughter of Raja Singh, a resident of Khippawali village on the Abohar-Fazilka road, went missing on Friday under mysterious circumstances.

The family searched for the infant and, late night on Friday, the body of the infant was suspected to be in a septic tank of a toilet.

On Saturday morning, the septic tank was emptied of water and the body of the missing infant was recovered from the tank.

In his complaint to the police, Raja alleged that his child was picked from the perambulator by his sister-in-law Gurmeet Kaur on Friday and Swarnjit Kaur, his neighbourer, had seen her lifting and taking the child away.

He alleged Gurmeet was issueless after several years of her marriage and she used to meet ‘tantriks’ in this regard. He suspected her to have been advised by some ‘tantrik’ to do so.

On the basis of the statement of Raja, the Abohar police have booked Gurmeet Kaur under Sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) of the Indian Penal Code.

However, the accused was still at large, said Harjit Singh, superintendent of police, Abohar. Meanwhile, the body of the infant was handed over to the family after postmortem at the local civil hospital.