Highly educated couple kills daughters with dumbbell over 'superstitious' beliefs, says they will come back

In a bizzare incident, a well educated couple in Andhra Pradesh's Chittoor district killed their two daughters in a brutal manner, police said on Monday. The couple, identified as V Padmaja and V Purushotham Naidu, believed that their dead daughters would come back to life due to special powers. The victims have been identified as Alekya (27) and Sai Divya (22).

The father, who worked as an associate professor in the Government Women's Degree College in Madanapalle, himself was said to have called one of his colleagues over the phone soon after the incident on Sunday night and disclosed the killings. The lecturer immediately informed the police.

Alekhya used to work at Bhopal's Indian Institute of Forest Management and had recently resigned to prepare for civil services exam. The younger daughter Sai Divya was a graduate and was pursuing music at a Chennai-based AR Rahman institute, reported NDTV.

According to Madanapalle Deputy Superintendent of Police Ravi Manohara Chary, it was the mother who committed the killings using dumbbells. The mother, Padmaja, who reportedly is an IIT Gold Medallist, runs coaching center in Madanapalle, Prasanth Nagar area.

"The accused were found to be in a mentally disturbed state," News18 quoted DSP as saying.

Police have detained the couple in their house and started questioning while forensic teams were examining the closed-circuit television footage to establish if someone else were also involved in the spiritual rituals practised by the family.

Police sent the bodies for post-mortem while launching a full-scale investigation into the case.