Woman, 3 grandchildren found dead in Mirzapur's forest area

VARANASI: Mysterious deaths of a woman pilgrim and her three grandchildren on a hill in the dense Uttar Devi Ka Jungle area under Vindhyachal police station limits in Mirzapur district brought the men-in-khaki on their toes on Tuesday. According to reports, Indar Prasad, a native of Rasauli village of Khalilabad area in Sant Kabir Nagar district, had bought a new bus recently.On May 18, he boarded over 30 persons of his village in the bus to go to Vindhyachal for offering religious rituals at Vindhyavasini Temple. Hubia Devi (62), wife of Lalta Gupta of Rasauli village, also joined this group of villagers with her grandchildren - Dheeraj Gupta (9), Gulshan (7) and Neelam (5) - for the pilgrimage.
After offering prayers at Vindhyavasini Temple, all the villagers gathered near the bus but Hubia and her grandchildren did not reach there. After searching them at different places, Indar and other Rasauli natives reported the matter to the local police. The cops also tried to search the woman and her grandchildren in nearby temples, dharmshalas and markets etc.
On receiving information of the incident, Dinesh Gupta, son of Hubia and father of missing children, also reached Vindhyachal. On Tuesday morning, some shepherds noticed the bodies of a woman and three children near Budhanala on a hill in Uttar Devi Ka jungle and reported the matter to their village chief as well as police. When the cops reached there with Dinesh, they were shocked to see that the upper part of the body of Gulshan was missing while other bodies had also started decaying. The cause of their death could not become clear during the initial investigation of police.
SP (Mirzapur) S C Pandey, who also reached the incident site, said that the cause of death would become clear in the postmortem report. He said that how the woman and children reached at this hill needs to be probed. He said that Sant Kabir Nagar police had started investigating the matter while a team of Mirzapur police was also sent there to know whether Dinesh’s family had any enmity with anyone. He said that the motive behind the murders is not known so far.