The suspect in police custody
HISAR/PANIPAT: Panipat police, investigating the mysterious drowning of a six-year-old girl at a wedding, have unravelled a series of child murders by a woman, including that of her own toddler son.According to police, the suspect, 34-year-old Poonam, has confessed that she has the urge to murder children more attractive than her own, and that she killed her son because she was afraid he had seen one of the murders. The other victims are girls – children of her relatives – and their deaths were mistaken for accidents. Poonam was arrested on Tuesday. She has another son, a four-year-old, and her husband is a farmer in Bhavar village of Sonipat. Police said she coaxed the latest victim, Vidhi, to fill up a tub with water and bring it to her, and then drowned her in it. Panipat SP Bhupendra Singh said that on Dec 1, police received information a 6-year-old girl had drowned in a tub inside a house in Naultha village, around 15km from Panipat.
Before Poonam’s confession, kin thought deaths were accidentalA police team found the child’s body lying face down in a plastic tub in a storeroom on the first floor. Only her head was submerged. Finding it suspicious, police had a forensic team examine the scene. Postmortem by a board of doctors at the Civil Hospital suspected of homicide.Based on a complaint by the girl’s grandfather, Pal Singh, a case was registered against unknown persons at Israna police station.Vidhi, who was also from Bhavar, had travelled with her family to attend the wedding in Naultha. Late Monday night, when the baraat was setting off, Pal got a call that Vidhi was missing. Pal’s wife Ompati and Vidhi’s mother Rakhi began searching the house and nearby streets.In the early hours, when Ompati went to the first floor, she found the storeroom door locked from outside. On opening it, she found Vidhi lying face down in a plastic tub filled with water. The child’s father rushed her to Israna Medical College, where doctors declared her dead.Police began interviewing everyone who was at the venue. When the officers spoke with Vidhi’s aunt, Poonam, they spotted inconsistencies in her statements and grew suspicious.During interrogation, Poonam admitted to not only murdering Vidhi but also killing three earlier. The modus operandi was the same – they had all drowned in plastic tubs.Married in 2019, she killed her first born, Shubham, in 2023, said police. He was three years old then.According to her statement, Poonam drowned her sister-in-law’s nine-year-old daughter, Ishika, in a water tank at their home in Bhavar in Jan 2023. She feared that her son might reveal the truth, so she killed him as well. The deaths were believed by the family to be accidental.Then, in Aug this year, she drowned her cousin’s six-year-old daughter, Jiya, at her maternal home in Siwah village. This death, too, was seen as accidental.
