CHITTOOR: A couple allegedly bludgeoned their two young daughters to death with a blunt weapon, suspected to be a dumbbell, at their house in Shiva Nagar on the outskirts of Madanapalle late Sunday night.
The mother Padmaja is the correspondent at a private school while the father Purushottam Naidu is the principal of a women’s degree college in the town. Their elder daughter Alekhya (27) completed her Master’s degree in Bhopal, while the younger one Sai Divya (22) did her BBA. Divya, who was a student of AR Rahman Music School in Mumbai, had returned home after the Covid-induced lockdown.
Madanapalle DSP Ravi Manohara Chari said the family members had been behaving strangely since the outbreak of Covid-19 and had confined themselves to their home most of the time.
On hearing strange and loud noises from the house, locals alerted the police. Initially, the couple prevented the police from entering the house.
When the police entered the house, they found one of the girls lying dead in the puja room, while the other was lying in another room covered with red colour cloth and some puja material around her body.
“During our preliminary investigation, the couple seemed to be highly superstitious as they asked us to keep the bodies in the house for a day stating that their daughters would come back to life,’’ the DSP said.
The couple also told the police that they received a divine message to sacrifice their daughters as the Kali Yuga was going to end that night and they would be reborn next day at the beginning of the Satya Yuga.
With much difficulty, the police shifted the bodies to the government hospital for postmortem. The couple were taken into custody for questioning. A case was registered.