After the skeletons of three minor girls, reported missing for the last one month, were recovered from a forest in Harra area of Mirzapur, their mother mysteriously absconded.
The girls had left their home with their mother in Belahi village of Halia area a month back and were missing ever since.
The skeletons were sent for autopsy and forensic examination.
As per reports, some local shepherds spotted the skeletons in the jungles of Harra on Wednesday afternoon and alerted the father and brother of the victims who later reached there and identified them with the help of the clothes lying there.
The police were subsequently informed and the cops reached the spot and sent the skeletons for autopsy and forensic examination.
Efforts were now being made to trace the absconding mother.
During the preliminary probe, it surfaced that Devidas Kole of Belahi village had three sons and a daughter from his first wife Falguni who died a few years ago. Later, he married Sima, who had two daughters from her first marriage. After marriage, Sima’s daughters also started living with Kole’s family.
On August 16, Sima left home with the three daughters -- Golu (12), Munni (10) and Mamta (8) -- without informing her husband. Later, Kole contacted his in-laws to know about their whereabouts but failed.
On August 21, Sima contacted her brother Ramakant over phone and said that she was in Indore with her daughters. On the occasion of Raksha Bandhan, she reached Ramakant’s place alone and on being asked about her daughters, she said that she had left them at Indore railway station. Later, Kole and Ramakant reached Indore and also visited Ujjain to search for the three girls but could not find them.
Kole claimed that when they reached the jungles after learning about the recovery of skeletons, Sima too left home and absconded. It seems that she was behind the killing of all the three.
The police registered a case and formed teams to trace Sima and quiz her to extract the truth.
Meanwhile in another case in Mirzapur, an armed criminal was lynched by an angry mob a few minutes after he killed a businessman at Dadra Market in Marihan police station area on Wednesday.
As per reports, Satyam Kumar and his mother were sitting at the shop’s counter when Rishabh Pandey reached the shop. Without any provocation, Pandey whipped out his pistol and opened fire, killing Satyam on the spot. After killing Satyam, Pandey tried to abscond and took shelter in a neighbouring house but was caught by the local residents and brutally battered to death.
The police took the bodies into custody and sent them for post-mortem.