The shocking triple murder of a 27-year-old mother of five and her two small children at their home shook West Delhi’s Khayala area on Monday. Alleging cops’ inaction, angry residents attacked the police team when the bodies of the victims were handed over to their family. At least 10 policemen sustained injuries in the stone-pelting by agitated locals. Two motorcycles were also set on fire.
While the woman and two of her children, a 8-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl, were murdered, the killers did not harm two toddlers and an infant who were present in the house at the time of the incident.
The woman’s husband Zafar, (30), who works in a denim factory, had gone to Jaipur for some work and discovered the bodies when he returned home early on Monday morning. Zafar immediately called police.
Police suspect the involvement of an insider in the killings and investigators are interrogating Zafar along with the family’s relatives, friends, neighbours, the house owner and labourers working in a nearby jean manufacturing unit.
Police said Imran (8) and Khushi (6), were strangled to death and their bodies were found on the second floor of their rented accommodation.
While the bodies of the two children were found on the bed with the cloths used to strangulate them still tried around their necks, their mother Shabnam had a deep wound on her neck that was apparently inflicted with a pair of scissors, said police, adding that her legs were also tied with a ribbon.
Three of Shabnam’s children — Anam (3), Arshi (2) and 11-month-old Ayaan — were found crying near the bodies. They were not touched by the attackers.
Police said the attackers murdered the two older children to hide their identities and left the three other children, who are too young to recognise them, alive.
Police said the murder took place sometime late on Sunday night and the killers might have been more than two in number.
Joint Commissioner of Police Dependra Pathak told The Pioneer that the role of insiders cannot be ruled out as the valuables in the house were untouched and the killers had gained a friendly entry. “Several people, including the landlord have been detained for questioning,” said Pathak.
The four-storey house is in the middle of a locality where every second household is involved in manufacturing denim jeans. The house owner Fahim Qureshi runs a jean manufacturing unit on the ground floor of the house while Zafar and Shabnam had taken the first and second floor of the house on rent.
According to Shabnam’s father Riyaz Hussain, who lives in the same locality, his daughter and her five children had dinner at his house on Sunday night as Shabnam’s husband was out of town. “She went home after dinner but in the morning I got to know that my daughter has been killed,” a shocked Hussain told The Pioneer.
Another relative said Shabnam had often complained that Fahim Qureshi had designs on her. “On Sunday night too Shabnam had shared with her mother her fears regarding Qureshi’s bad intentions as Zafar was out of town. But she went home after dinner,” the relative said.
Police have sent the bodies for post-mortem examination to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital and are awaiting the reports.