Madanapalle (Andhra Pradesh), Jan 25 (IANS): A highly superstitious teacher couple killed their two daughters, believing that they could be resurrected at Madanapalle in Andhra Pradesh's Chittoor district.
V. Purushotam Naidu, lecturer in a government women's degree college and his wife V. Padmaja, a maths teacher in Masterminds IIT Talent School committed these murders on Sunday evening.
"It appears that they were following some superstitious beliefs like after death they will be resurrected and life can be put into them," Chittoor superintendent of police S. Senthil Kumar told IANS.
Kumar said Naidu and Padmaja are currently in a deranged mental state and it appears that they were living in occult practices, which he said is the motivation them to kill their daughters.
Of the murdered two, elder daughter Alekhya (27) completed a forest studies diploma in Bhopal while the younger one Sai Divya (22) studied BBA. Divya was also a student of A. R. Rahman Music School in Chennai.
On Sunday, one of Naidu's colleagues alerted the police and when the police arrived, the couple tried to prevent them from entering their house.
However, on entering the house, police found one girl lying dead in the prayer room while other girl was found in another room with some ritual material on her body and a red cloth.
Incidentally, the parents asked police to keep their daughters bodies in their home itself for a day as they believed that they would return to life.
According to police, parents as well as the daughters were devotional to the extent that they thought God will save them.
"They performed some puja in the house itself because they are saying that ill will come out of their daughters. They killed them within the house," said a police official.
One of girls was bludgeoned with a dumbbell and police found both of their bodies naked when they entered.
Naidu and Padmaja told police that they got a divine message to sacrifice their daughters as Kal Yug would end on Sunday night and Satya Yug would begin on Monday with the resurrection of their daughters.
Kumar said that a case has been registered and the couple is in the process of being produced before a magistrate as some formalities such as panchnama and other are currently being done.
The couple was booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) 302.