Five members of two families, including a two-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl, were found dead in mysterious circumstances at Narsingi of Cyberabad on the city’s western outskirts on Tuesday.
Bodies of three women Laxmi (42), her daughter Sindhu (16), and their close relative P. Madhavi (26), were found at an isolated place on the fringes of Indra Reddy Nagar Kanche village of Narsingi. Alerted by residents, the Narsingi police rushed to the place.
There were no clues about the identity of the victims, barring a handkerchief and a pair of casual shoes — apparently belonging to the victims — lying close to the bodies. No visible injuries were found on the bodies. Even as investigators racked their brains to identify the victims and people started making wild guesses about possible motives behind their deaths, Narsingi Inspector G.V. Ramana Goud received a message that a man and a two-year-old boy were found dead inside a car at the under-bridge of Narsingi Outer Ring Road.
Based on the car registration number, the Inspector traced its owner Ravinder Reddy. After speaking to him, the investigators realised that Laxmi and Sindhu were his wife and daughter respectively. The man in the car turned out to be P. Prabhakar Reddy (32), and the boy was his son P. Varshit. Madhavi was his wife. The two families were closely related. Laxmi was the younger sister of Prabhakar Reddy’s mother.
A stock broker and share market consultant, Prabhakar Reddy lived with his family at Ashoknagar of Ramachandrapuram. Ravinder Reddy was an employee of ITW Signode company and lived in Ameenpur. The five victims left their respective houses in Ravinder Reddy’s Swift Dzire car around noon on Monday. “They called Laxmi’s son Dinesh Reddy, who was in his engineering college, and told him that they were going to see Dindi water project,” the police said.
Around 6 p.m., Dinesh received another call saying they started for home having completed their trip. “After returning home from work, I rang up their mobile phones but they were switched off,” Mr. Ravinder Reddy said. On Tuesday morning, he started for Dindi project with his friends to search for his missing family members. In fact, he was near Kadthal of Mahabubnagar when the Narsingi police called him.
Six partially emptied water bottles with some cool drink inside were found near the feet of Prabhakar Reddy in the car. Police suspect the five victims died after consuming the poison mixed with cool drink. “We need time to ascertain what exactly happened and what drove them to do so,” the Inspector said.