By IANS,
Bulandshahr : Seven members of a family, including a nine-month pregnant woman, were massacred in an Uttar Pradesh village Tuesday, the police said suspecting it to be related to a property dispute.
The brutal killings took place at around 2 a.m. in Bararai village in Bulandshahr district, when the family members were sleeping. Bararai comes under Aurangabad police station. Bulandshahr is some 190 km from state capital Lucknow.
“The family head, Sukhveer Singh, was a well-to do farmer and it appears that the entire family was killed while they were sleeping,” inspector Balvir Singh of Aurangabad police station told IANS over telephone.
No valuables were found missing from the house and personal enmity is suspected to be the motive of the murders, he added.
According to the police, Singh was butchered with a chopper when he was sleeping at his agriculture farm, a little away from his residence.
The assailants then barged into his residence by scaling a seven-foot-high boundary wall. They then killed Singh’s wife Suren Bala, son Surya Pratap, his wife Mamta, second son Abhishekh, his wife Lata and Surya Pratap’s two-year-old son Cheeku, said the police.
Lata was nine months pregnant, said a police officer.
The criminals, who were about a dozen in number, used sharp edged weapons and automatic fire arms in the murders, said police spokesman Yash Pal Singh.
After butchering the victims with choppers, the criminals also pumped bullets in their bodies, the police said, adding the bodies bore sharp cuts and bullet injuries.
Villagers tried to catch hold of the assailants after they heard gunshots but the criminals scared them away by firing indiscriminately, said the police.
Inspector general of police (Meerut Zone) Gyan Singh said: “We have constituted teams of policemen. We would be in a position to reveal something substantial after getting feedback from our teams. Right now our priority is to maintain peace and cremate the bodies.”