Three young tribal sisters were found dead—hanging from a single rope on a tree—near their home late on Tuesday night in Jawar police station area of Khandwa district in Madhya Pradesh. Police said though the detailed postmortem reports were yet to come, the incident prima facie looks like that of mass suicide.
MP Congress president and ex-chief minister Kamal Nath has demanded an impartial probe into the incident saying that different reasons behind the incident were coming to the fore and truth should come out. Calling it a heart-rending incident, Nath also asked the government to provide financial assistance to the family given their financial condition.
The incident occurred close to midnight of Tuesday at Kotapet Falya (settlement) in Bhamgarh village. The three sisters—Sonu (23), Savitri (21) and Lalita (19)—were found hanging from a single rope on a tree near their home. Of the three, Savitri was married, while Sonu was a college student. Lalita was a dropout and was engaged in manual labour. Their father Jam Singh is dead. The dead women have two more sisters and three brothers, sources said.
Khandwa superintendent of police (SP) Vivek Singh told THE WEEK that prima facie the incident looks to be a mass suicide, but probe was on from different angles and detailed postmortem reports were awaited. “We did not find any suicide note and the family is unable to give any indication for reasons of the mass suicide. There was apparently no conflict in the family. There is no sign of any sexual assault. We are looking at different angles and will be talking to persons in the college to which the eldest among the three deceased studied,” he said.
Local media quoted the elder sister of the three women as saying that they had called her up on Tuesday night and spoke to her and her son at length. The trio reportedly told her to come and visit them before Sonu went back to her college hostel in Khandwa city.
