Woman who killed her daughters claims she’s Lord Shiva’s incarnation

HYDERABAD: The woman who allegedly killed her two daughters with the help of her husband in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district told police that she is an incarnation of Lord Shiva and that she has poison stored in her throat, the police said on Tuesday.

Padmaja Naidu, a gold medallist in mathematics who is around 50 years old, also tried to resist attempts to make her undergo a Covid-19 test, claiming she had already driven the coronavirus away, the police added.

A local court on Tuesday sent Padmaja Naidu, who runs a popular IIT entrance preparation institute in Madanapalle town, and her husband Malluru Purushottam Naidu to 14 days of judicial custody. The latter, around 55 years old, is the vice-principal of a degree college.

They allegedly killed their daughters, 27 and 22, on Sunday night, convinced that their (the couple’s) supernatural powers would bring the young women back to life. They were detained the same night.

After Tuesday’s court order, the couple was taken to a jail in the evening. Earlier, in the afternoon, police took them to a government hospital for Covid-19 tests before their court appearance, as per pandemic protocols.

It was then that Padmaja Naidu refused to cooperate. “She was hysteric while being taken to the hospital. She claimed herself to be an incarnation of Lord Shiva and that she had poison in her throat (like the deity),” Madanapalle police inspector M Srinivasulu said.

“She said she had already driven the coronavirus away from her. She screamed: ‘Shiva is back, work is done. I am Shiva’,” according to the inspector. She refused to enter the hospital and doctors had to come out to the police van to collect her sample, Srinivasulu said.

On Monday evening, the couple’s daughters were cremated. While their mother did not turn up, the father lit the funeral pyres under the police’s watch. “We unnecessarily killed our own daughters. We don’t deserve to live,” he said.

Alekhya, the elder daughter, was enrolled in a postgraduate programme at the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal, and had returned home in August; she was preparing for the civil services examination. The younger daughter, Sai Divya, had an MBA and was learning music in Chennai.

Police said the couple believed that the “coronavirus pandemic was an account of some evil forces and they were performing rituals to ward off these forces”.

Both daughters were dressed in red. It wasn’t immediately clear whether they were willing participants in the rituals.