Alekhya (27) and Sai Divya (23) with their parents who have been accused of killing them.
Hyderabad:
Two young women in their 20s were killed allegedly by their parents inside their three-storey home in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district, the police said. Both were apparently participating in a puja ritual and were hit with a dumbbell, the police said, adding that it seems to be a case of occult practices.
“The scene of crime suggests some rituals were carried out; the women were clad in a red saree and the parents appeared to be highly delusional,” police officer M Chidananda Reddy told NDTV.
No one had been allowed inside the house for months, since the first coronavirus lockdown, the police said.
When the police reached the spot late last night, the parents, both highly educated, reportedly claimed that they could revive their daughters if they were given time till tonight.
“He (the father) had called up his friend and told him about what had happened after which the police was informed and we went in. The parents insisted that magical things had happened in their home and their daughters would come back to life,” Mr Reddy said.
The couple has been taken in custody and a post-mortem of the bodies is underway, the police said.
According to the police, Alekhya (27) and Sai Divya (23) were found in a pool of blood. The father and the mother have been identified as Valleru Purushottam Naidu and Padmaja.
“Naidu is a professor of chemistry and vice-principal at the Government Girls’ Degree College in Madanapalle, while Padmaja identifies herself as a gold medallist, postgraduate in mathematics, who was working at an IIT coaching institute. Both are in their 50s,” Mr Reddy said.
The women had head injuries and apparently bled to death, the police said, adding that the couple are suspected to have allegedly murdered their daughters late Sunday afternoon.
Alekhya used to work at Bhopal’s Indian Institute of Forest Management and had recently resigned to prepare for civil services exam. The younger daughter Sai Divya was a graduate and was pursuing music at a Chennai-based A R Rahman institute.
The police said they were looking at CCTV camera in the vicinity to track the movement of people in and out of the house.