|

A 55-year-old woman and her adopted daughter were clubbed to death by their family members over property issues in a village in Aligarh district Monday afternoon.
Agitated with the brutal killing, locals and bereaved family members refused to go for cremation till the house of the accused was bulldozed and early arrest of the culprits assured.
After the post-mortem examination, the relatives took the bodies of the mother-daughter duo to their residence at Garhi Surajmal in Tappal and kept them in the garden.
Local BJP MLA Anup Valmiki and MP Satish Gautam reached the spot even as police tried to persuade the protesters to cremate the bodies. Revenue Minister Anup Valmiki, who also reached there, assured the protesters stern action against the accused and requested them to go ahead with the last rites.
According to the police, the three younger brothers-in-law of the woman, Mukesh Kumari, and four other members of the family have been named as accused in the FIR filed at the Gonda police station but no arrests have been made so far.
“A dispute over the property of the deceased Suresh Kumar in Delhi and also in his parental village seems to be the cause of the double murder. Three police teams have been formed to nab the absconding culprits and we are hopeful of arresting them soon,” Senior Superintendent of Police, Aligarh, Kalanidhi Naithani said.
The police said Kumar, 62, was a driver with the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and died after a heart attack on August 30 at a hospital in the national capital. Mukesh Kumari and their adopted daughter Priyanka (22) wanted to perform his last rites and other rituals in Delhi but Kumar’s brothers insisted the rites must take place at their ancestral village Kaimthal.
On August 4, all family members assembled in Kaimthal to pay homage to the departed soul where Kumar’s brothers raised the objection, saying Priyanka could not inherit her father’s property and it should be equally distributed among living members of his family.
The altercation soon turned violent and Mukesh Kumari and Priyanka were repeatedly beaten with clubs and lathis till death. The attackers fled the village before the police could reach the place.
“Forensic experts and the dog squad have been pressed into service to get a clue of the fugitives. Priyanka was the daughter of deceased Mukesh Kumar’s brother. She was adopted by them 19 years back as the couple had no child,” said Palash Bansal, Superintendent of Police (Rural).