IANS
 
Partur (Maharashtra), Aug 23: Three teenage students of a tribal school in Partur, Maharashtra killed their two younger schoolmates so that they could get a long holiday.

The killers, who have confessed to their crime, will be produced before the district court in Jalna and sent to a reformatory, Partur police told IANS on Thursday August 23.

The offenders, Jibhya Kale, Vallabh Kale and Namdeo Pawar, all in their early teens, took 8-year-old Ashok Kale and his 5-year-old brother Mangal Kale to a farm near their school late Tuesday and asphyxiated them.

The search, launched by the school authorities after the victims' sister, also an inmate of the Ashram Shala (government run residential schools for tribals), complained to them about their disappearance, led to the bodies of the kids in the school bathroom.

The tribal inmates of the school, yearning for a break, knew that the school gets a holiday for as long as 15 days in the event of death of a student, police said.

The post-mortem ruled out an earlier suspicion of sexual abuse of the children by their seniors who insisted that getting a holiday was their sole motive.

Significantly, the parents of the dead children, who work as labourers in Mumbai, intend to keep their daughter Indira in the Ashram Shala even after the tragedy apparently because the living conditions there are much better than they can provide at home, police sub inspector Sheshrao Rathod told IANS.