Migrant couple poisons 3 minor daughters to death in Jalandhar, blames poverty

Jalandhar, October 2

Three minor girls — aged four, seven and nine — were poisoned to death by their parents in Kahanpur village near here on Sunday.

The incident came to light this morning as the bodies of Amrita Kumari (9), Sakshi (7) and Kanchan (4), daughters of migrant labourer Sushil Mandal, were recovered from a chest at their place. Since froth had come out of their mouths, the police suspected a foul play.

Jalandhar Rural SSP Mukhwinder Singh Bhullar said, “The parents did not inform us about their missing children till late last evening. We got a call on 112, our helpline number, from their landlord Surinder Singh about the missing kids. Sub-Inspector from Maqsudan police station reached the spot around 11 pm and started the search. As the search teams went again early this morning, the SI informed us that the parents were not making any efforts and did not seem to be in any pain. Rather, the father of the girls was in a drunken condition. At this, our teams became even more suspicious and we traced their bodies dumped in a storage box at their place.”

DSP Balvir Singh added, “Later, the mother of the girls herself confessed that they had killed their daughters owing to poverty as they were not able to feed their children properly. She said they had added an pesticide used to spray crops in their milk last morning. They had taken their two toddlers, a boy and a girl, to work at a construction site after committing the crime.”

The DSP said that postmortem report could give more conclusive details.