Drunk staff kill trader's wife, kids

In a heart-rending incident, two employees of a furniture shop slit the throat of their employer's wife and the couple's two kids of four and two and a half years on late Monday evening.


Arti and her two children Sanchit and Ashi were lying in a pool of blood inside their house, situated on the first floor of the building which has on the ground floor Vogue Furniture, owned by Arti's husband Sanjiv Kumar, on Nala Road here.

The gruesome killings came to light after a neighbour informed Sanjiv, who was away in Delhi on a business trip, that the door of his house was open at the dead of night. A worried Sanjiv tried to contact his wife on her cellphone, but there was no response. He called up his in-laws and other relatives who too lived in the same locality. They rushed to Sanjiv's house and found Arti's headless body in the passage and the headless bodies of the kids on the bed.

Senior police officers, including Patna DIG Vineet Vinayak, SSP Bachchu Singh Meena and SP (city) Manu Maharaj soon reached the spot. “We have arrested Mukesh Kumar and Upendra Prasad, who worked as a carpenter and a munshi at Vogue, for the ghastly killings,” Meena told newsmen on Tuesday morning and added police also recovered Rs 26,000 and other valuables looted from the house from their possession.

Investigators had their antennae up when they found no signs of resistance. “We, therefore, suspected involvement of insiders and soon got clues that led to the arrests,” Meena said.

Cops came to know that the two employees on Monday evening boozed inside the shop. One neighbour even reprimanded them for this. After downing the shutters, as usual, Upendra and Mukesh went upstairs to hand over the sale proceeds of the day. Under the influence of liquor and finding the woman alone, they bolted the door from inside and slit Arti's throat with a knife. Since the kids knew them and could spill the beans later, the butchers killed them too.

“They then collected whatever they could lay their hands on, opened the gate and walked away” the SSP said and added since both of them used to go upstairs, none of the relatives suspected their hand.

One of the two employees would sit at a neighbouring shop along with employees of other shops every day after his duty was over. On that fateful night, he skipped the exercise. When asked why was he in a hurry, he told his friends he had to catch a train.
Cops asked the bereaved family members to call both the employees to Nala Road. Only Upendra came. When a police team reached Mukesh's house at Musallahpur, he jumped off the two-storied building and tried to escape. But policemen pinned him down.

Confronted by cops, the duo soon started singing.Police sources said the killers will be put on speedy trial. ``We will ensure they get the harshest punishment,” a police officer said.