LUCKNOW: A 24-year-old man, in connivance with his father, killed his four sisters and mother inside a hotel room here on Wednesday. He alleged land-related harassment by some locals of his community in their hometown Agra and claimed they were selling his sisters in Hyderabad. The man, identified as Arshad, walked to the police station after dropping his father, Mohammed Badar, at the Charbagh railway station.
Panic ensued in the densely populated and commercially active Naka area on the very first day of the year, Wednesday morning, in Lucknow after police arrived with Arshad at a small hotel, discovering the bodies of women, including a 45-year-old woman and her four daughters, aged between 9 and 19 years, in hotel room.
The man also shot a video where he not only showed the lifeless bodies of his mother and sisters but also explained the reason behind the killings and blamed the neighbours for his extreme step.
All senior police officers, including Lucknow’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Central, Raveena Tyagi, who reached the crime scene, said Arshad and his father, Mohammad Badar, 55, are the prime suspects for murdering the woman and her four daughters and confessed to the crime. She informed, “Mohd Arshad has been taken into custody and further investigation is on while the search for the father is ongoing. The teams are scanning the CCTV footage to nab his father,” she said.
The DCP said the deceased were identified as Aasma, the mother of the accused, and his four younger sisters, Aalia (9), Aaksha (16), Rehmeen (18), and Aalsiya (19). She said the family are residents of Islamnagar, Tehdi Bagiya, Kuberpur of Agra, and they reached Lucknow on December 30 and booked room 109 in Hotel Sharanjeet for two days.
She said the injuries on the bodies suggested that the man and his father strangled them to death, and the lack of resistance raises suspicion that the deceased were given sedative-laced food before being murdered. Their wrists were also slit.
The DCP said the incident occurred after 1 am, as the hotel staff said that the deceased were seen roaming outside the room until then. She said the police were further investigating and trying to ascertain the exact motive behind the crime.
“In the initial interrogation, accused Arshad confessed to killing his four sisters and mother and said that the people in the neighbourhood were harassing his family. He was afraid that if something happened to him, what would happen to his mother and sisters, so he decided to kill them,” said DCP Tyagi. The bodies were sent for post-mortem examination while Agra police were informed about the incident.
Additional DCP, Manisha Singh, said that an FIR under the charges of BNS 103 (murder) has been registered by police sub-inspector Kamal Kumar against Arshad.
DCP Central Zone, Raveena Tyagi, said Arshad first took his family to Ajmer, then brought them to Lucknow and arranged for them to stay at a hotel. At night, he made them consume alcohol, gagged some with cloth, and strangled them with a dupatta. He slit the wrists of others using a blade. His father assisted in the crime.
Afterward, Arshad dropped his father at the railway station and went to the police station to report the incident. Based on his statements, the police recovered the murder weapons—a blade and a dupatta. Further interrogation is underway, and evidence is being collected to verify every detail.
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