Alcoholic father drowns 3 daughters to death after wife refuses money for drinking: Police

Hyderabad: An alcoholic father forcibly drowned his three daughters, all below 10 years, to death by sitting on their bodies in a water tank at Tadkol village of Banswada block in Telangana’s Kamareddy district on Friday, the police said.

Mohammad Fayaz, who was also addicted to gambling, had been regularly pestering his wife for money to meet his expenses. “Though he works as a daily-wage labourer, he never used to give money to his family and instead, he had been harassing his wife who does tailoring work to feed her family,” Banswada inspector of police P Mahesh Goud told Hindustan Times.

Quoting a complaint from his wife, the inspector said on Thursday evening, Fayaz quarrelled with her demanding money for gambling. “He allegedly beat her and her four children – three daughters of 11, 9 and 7 years of age and a five-year old son indiscriminately. She went to her brother’s place in the same village,” he said.

On Friday morning, Fayaz went to his brother-in-law’s house to get his wife and children back to his home. But she said she would come back only if he earned money and gave up his habits.

“He promised her that he would start going to work again. He asked her to send the children along with him to the nearby dargah, where they would have lunch together. She believed him and sent them along with him. After some time, their son came back crying, stating that his father had beat him and his sisters again,” Goud said.

Immediately, she and her brother, along with other family members, started searching for Fayaz and his three daughters. “At around 11 am, they found him coming out of the tank with wet clothes. When they asked him where the three daughters are, he did not respond properly,” the inspector said.

Some farmers, who noticed Fayaz going to the tank along with his daughters, told the family members, who rushed there only to find the girls’ footwear near the tank. They immediately alerted the police, who went there and retrieved the bodies of the three girls.

The police took Fayaz into custody and during interrogation, he admitted to have forcibly drowned them in the tank by sitting on their bodies.

“We have sent the bodies to post mortem and are investigating. We have registered a case under Section 302 (murder) and also under Section 498-A (domestic violence) of Indian Penal Code,” Goud said. (HT)