BAHRAICH/LUCKNOW: In a chilling incident, six charred bodies, including those of two children, were recovered from a house in Nindurpurwa village in Bahraich on Wednesday morning.Police said farmer Vijay Maurya (40) killed two village boys with a sharp-edged weapon before setting his wife and two young daughters ablaze along with himself inside a room locked from inside.According to officials, Maurya brought three village boys to his home on the pretext of sowing garlic, luring them with Rs 10 per kilo as wages.He later sent one boy away on an errand, while killing the other two — Suraj Yadav (14) and Sunny Verma (13) — by slitting their throats and chopping their fingers.Fearing exposure, Maurya confined his wife Dheeraj Kumari (35) and daughters Priyanshi (8) and Riyanshi alias Chutki (6) in another room, doused the house in fire, and also dragged his cattle inside. His tractor parked outside was set ablaze as well.Villagers rushed after spotting flames around 9 am and alerted police and fire services. By the time the fire was doused, six people and four cattle perished. The bodies of the two boys were found mutilated on the floor, while the family’s charred remains were discovered on the loft inside the house.“Police suspect Maurya was mentally unstable, as his infant son died two months ago and he had ongoing disputes with his brothers,” said SP Bahraich, RN Singh.Shaken villagers recalled how Maurya earlier attempted to lure other children for farm work. “He came to call my nephew too, but we refused. Soon after, we saw smoke rising from his house,” said a local, Jhingur.“We are probing three key questions: the trigger behind the dispute over garlic sowing, the motive for killing his daughters, and how the bodies ended up on the loft,” DIG Devipatan range Amit Pathak told TOI.A plastic bottle with some inflammable liquid, which could be diesel or kerosene, was also found on the spot, Pathak said, adding that forensic teams have been roped in to establish the exact sequence of events.“All six bodies have been sent for postmortem, which will give a detailed account of the cause of deaths,” Pathak added.
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