By IANS,
Bhopal : Dacoits burnt to death at least 12 people, including three children and four women, after locking them up in their house in a Madhya Pradesh village late Wednesday night, the police said Thursday.
More than two dozen dacoits belonging to Sunder Patel and Deepak Patel gang reached the house of Lallu Gaud in Bichichiyan village of the state’s Satna district late Wednesday night and locked the 12 up in the house and set fire to it, police inspector G.P. Dwivedi said.
Earlier, Sukhbir Singh, the collector of Satna district, 490 km from the state capital, had said the incident occurred early Thursday morning.
Sunder – the brother of dreaded dacoit Ambika Prasad Patel alias Thokia, who was eliminated by the Uttar Pradesh police last year, and Deepak, his uncle, suspected Gaud’s son Beta Lal, a former dacoit, had become a police informer and had played a key role in the shootout-death of Thokia few months ago, the inspector added.
Eye witnesses told the police that the dacoits caught hold of Beta Lal while he was returning after buying kerosene from a nearby village, sprayed it around his house and set it on fire.
The police came to know of the incident in the morning, rushed to the spot and brought out the bodies of the victims this afternoon.
Senior officers are camping at the scene of crime, which is in a dense forested area bordering Uttar Pradesh where the dacoits are believed to have fled after committing the crime.
The victims have been identified as Beta Lal, Hakim Singh, Sant Gaud, Ramkali, Matabai, Mamta and Kiran besides three children Deepak (8), Veeru (4) and Prabha (2). Two others, identified as Nanhe Musalman and Om Prakash, who were in the house at the time of the incident were also burnt alive.
The police have launched search operations and also sought the help of the Uttar Pradesh police to catch the dacoits.