‘My son got his 3 kids killed as he had an extra-marital affair’
CHANDIGARH/KURUKSHETRA: The three young siblings saw their death as the assailant shot them in their foreheads from close range with a country-made pistol.
The bodies of 11-year-old Sameer, Simran, 8, and Samar, 3, were found in a forest in Morni on Tuesday, nearly 110km away from their village Sarsa in Haryana’s Kurukshetra.
According to the police, the suspect is the children’s 26-yearold uncle Jagdeep Singh, who allegedly shot dead his two nephews and a niece on Sunday at the behest of their father, Sohan Malik or Sonu.
Police arrested Jagdeep, while Sonu has been detained for interrogation.
Dhanno Devi, the children’s 58-year-old grandmother, said her son got rid of his three children because of an extramarital affair.
“Three months ago I was told by someone that Sonu was having an affair with a Himachali woman and she used to visit his shop in Kaithal. I didn’t know this will kill my three children,” she said in her village on Wednesday.
She demanded maximum punishment for her 28-year-old son. “I do not want to see his face.” Jeeta Malik, Sonu’s father, corroborated the extramarital angle.
Sonu’s 30-year-old wife, Suman, has been unconscious ever since learning about the fate of her three children.
She didn’t venture out of her room and hadn’t spoken to anyone since her children disappeared this weekend, the grandmother said.
Suman and Sonu, a professional photographer operating from Kaithal, married in 2005 and neighbours said she is the most good-natured woman in their locality.
“Though Sonu had an extra- marital affair, we never heard his wife fighting with him. She always remained busy in her house and children. Her children were very intelligent,” neighbour Malkeet Singh said.
But, according to Jagdeep, the kindly and hardworking woman and the kids were the biggest hurdle for Sonu in continuing his illicit affair.
Jagdeep, who is a farmer and a cousin of Sonu, told police that he killed the children as their father allegedly promised him to pay him handsomely after his intended second marriage.
Kurukshetra police were not convinced with Jagdeep’s confession. “We are investigating the allegations,” police superintendent Abhishek Garg said.
Jagdeep, father of a threeyear-old child, was sent to police remand for six days.
Police want to interrogate him more to find the car in which he took the three kids, the pistol used for the crime, and to know more details about the motive.
The autopsy of Sameer was done of Tuesday and that of his siblings on Wednesday.
The coroner’s report says bullets entered from the foreheads and went out through the back of the skull, which means the kids were probably looking at their uncle when he shot them in cold blood.
The gruesome triple murder has shocked the 6,000 residents of Sarsa. They said they had never heard a father getting his children killed to marry a second time.
“About 500 people from the village were searching the kids at Gita Jayanti Mela in Kurukshetra. But on Tuesday, we were told by police that they were killed by Jagdeep. It was shocking,” said Balraj Singh, Sonu’s uncle.
The villagers chose not to disclose the killings to the children’s mother and grandmother until the bodies reached the village.
They broke the tragic news after Jeeta Ram, the 65-year-old grandfather, brought the bodies from Panchkula where the autopsy was done.
Hundreds of the villagers and relatives gathered near the houses of Jagdeep and Sonu for a funeral procession on Wednesday evening.
The houses of Sonu and Jagdeep face each other, with a street running between. The families shared almost everything till the other day. But not anymore. The murder soured their relationship.