Gujarat: Six of family murdered at home in Dahod village

VADODARA: Six persons of a family were found brutally murdered in a dwelling in Tarakda Mahudi village of Dahod district’s Sanjeli taluka on Friday morning. The victims including four children and their parents were done to death with a sharp-edged weapon.
The macabre crime came to light when the village sarpanch Mahendra Palas went to the house of the victims in the morning to inform about the death of their cousin.Mahendra was informed by the Sanjeli police regarding the death of one Vikram Palas (22) whose body was found on the railway tracks near Morbi.
Vikram was a cousin of Bharat Palas (40) who was killed along with his wife Sami and children. The children were identified as daughter Dipika (12) as well as sons Hemraj (10), Deepesh (8) and Ravi (6). Most victims had sharp-edge weapon wounds on their head or neck.
Mahendra told the police that when he reached Bharat’s house, he was shocked to find four bodies outside the house and two others inside it.
Senior police officials, who were in Jhalod for an event that was also attended by chief minister Vijay Rupani, rushed to the spot on learning about the incident.
The police believe that they were murdered either on Wednesday or Thursday night. Dahod superintendent of police Hitesh Joysar said that the postmortem report of the bodies would give the exact details of the time of death.
Joysar said that teams of Dahod local crime branch, special operations group, Jhalod deputy superintendent of police, Dahod deputy superintendent of police, Dahod circle police inspector, three probationer deputy superintendents of police and one team of officials from the Panchmahal range had been roped in to crack the case.
Sources said that the manner in which the murders had been committed and the condition of the bodies revealed that they were attacked after they had slept. The bodies were found in cots when the sarpanch and others reached the dwelling.