A man has allegedly killed his two-month pregnant wife and three daughters by slitting their throats at the family’s home on Tuesday (February 24). The dead bodies of the woman, Anita, 27, and her three daughters, aged three, four and five, were reportedly spotted by neighbours and relatives in north Delhi’s Samaypur Badli on Wednesday morning, while the accused, Munchun Kewat, has absconded.

“The killings came to light around 8am when neighbours alerted the police. A police team from Samaypur Badli police station rushed to the spot and found the bodies of the woman and the three children lying inside a ground-floor room in a pool of blood,” Deputy commissioner of police (outer north) Hareshwar Swami said. An investigation is now underway, with police suspecting that the motive behind the horrific murders could be the Kewat’s preference for a son.

Describing the crime scene as “extremely brutal,” police said the injuries, caused by a sharp-edged weapon, were so deep that their windpipes had been cut. Police also alleged that Kewat was intoxicated before slitting his family’s throats.

Kewat’s two older brothers lived three streets away with their families. It was Kewat’s 10-year-old nephew who saw the dead bodies on Wednesday morning as he wanted to go to Azadpur Mandi – where Kewat worked as a vegetable seller – with him.

“He had been pestering us that he wanted to go to the market so we told him to go with Munchun. Around 6:30-7am, he went to their house,” Anita’s sister-in-law Sugni Devi, 36, said, according to Hindustan Times.

The 10-year-old nephew described the scene as “gory”: “The main gate was closed from outside so I opened it and went inside. Their room’s door was open but the curtain was raised. I went inside and found them unconscious with blood all around,” he said.

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With Kewat still missing, police are investigating all possible angles, including a suspected extramarital affair.

An investigator told HT that one of the neighbours told them the couple had a verbal spat on Tuesday night: “They said that the couple had a fight but they did not hear anything except loud voices so we don’t know the cause of the fight,” the officer said.

Investigators who viewed the CCTV footage saw the accused running from the street near his home at approximately 5am, switching his phone off in Jahangirpuri.

This comes after a couple in Uttar Pradesh has been sentenced to death following their conviction in a case of sexual abuse of 33 minors over the space of a decade. Some of the victims, all boys under 18, were as young as three years old, and the pair made a fortune from selling photographs and clips of the torture to buyers from 47 countries through the dark web.