Parents kill their 2 daughters in AP to usher in ‘Satya Yug’

Parents kill their 2 daughters in AP to usher in ‘Satya Yug’

Couple Believed Their Children Would Be Reborn In 24 Hours

Sandeep.Raghavan@timesgroup.com

Tirupati  26.01.2021 

The couple who bludgeoned their two college-going daughters to death at Madanapalle in AP’s Chittoor district on Sunday night did so with the belief that their children would come back to life within 24 hours. They strongly believed that ‘Kali Yug’ was ending and Monday would see the ‘dawn of Satya Yug’ which their ‘reborn’ daughters would be able to enjoy.

V Purushotham Naidu and his wife Padmaja told the police they ‘sacrificed’ the two women only to bring them back to life in a purer form. “Give us time till the end of the night, we will bring them back,” they said when the police reached their house after being alerted by a friend of the couple.

While Purushotham is an associate professor of chemistry at government degree college for women in Madanapalle, Padmaja runs a private coaching institute for IIT aspirants.

The victims have been identified as Alekya, 27, and Sai Divya, 22. Alekya had completed her MBA from Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal and was preparing for civil services. Younger daughter Sai Divya had recently completed her BBA and was learning music. The daughters had come home during the Covid-19 lockdown and stayed back.

Neighbours told police they had been hearing strange sounds from the house for the last four days, but the couple told everyone they were performing special pujas. At around 9pm on Sunday, Naidu called up a friend and told him his daughters had been sacrificed to the Almighty. Shocked, his friend alerted Madanapalle police who rushed to the spot.

The couple initially stopped the police from entering the house, stating rituals were being performed and no outsiders would be allowed inside. When police officials forcibly barged into the house, it was in disarray with objects of tantric worship strewn everywhere.

The body of one of the daughters was lying in the puja room while the second daughter’s body was found naked and in a pool of blood in a bedroom on the second floor. A ‘kalash’ had been stuffed in her mouth.

Police officials said the couple believed they could receive signals from the divine force. “Many miracles have happened in our home which you will never understand. Please let us complete our pujas and we will surely bring our daughters back to life,” the couple pleaded.

The younger daughter, who was the first to be killed, was bludgeoned with a dumb-bell in the puja room, while the elder daughter was killed with a trident. The bodies have been shifted to the local government hospital for post-mortem.

“Naidu and Padmaja will be taken into custody once they complete the last rites of their daughters,” Madanapalli DSP Ravi Manoharachari told TOI.

Chittoor SP S Senthil Kumar said, “Superstition appears to have driven the parents to kill their daughters. We will come to know if there was any other reason behind this killing during the course of our investigation.”

DRIVEN BY SUPERSTITION:

Alekya and Sai Divya had come home during the Covid-19 lockdown and stayed back