Two sisters, in their seventies, were found murdered at their flat in west Delhi’s Paschim Vihar on Thursday afternoon, police said, adding that they appear to have been strangulated and hit with a blunt weapon.

Their house was found to be ransacked, police said, adding that it is likely that robbery was the motive behind the murders. Investigators, however, remained uncertain if anything was missing from the house.

RP Upadhyay, special commissioner of police (law-and-order), identified the deceased as 75-year-old Usha Pathak and 70-year-old Asha Pathak. “While Usha had retired from a college in UP’s Hapur, where she worked as a music teacher, Asha, before retirement, used to work as a librarian at Indian Council of Agricultural Research in Delhi’s Krishi Bhawan,” Upadhyay said.

Upadhyay maintained that during preliminary probe, the police have found that the two sisters were unmarried and had been living together for the last three decades in a flat owned by both of them in Anandvan Society, a gated residential neighbourhood in Paschim Vihar’s A block. Their father Krishna Dev Pathak, Upadhyay said, used to teach music at the same house until his death in the 1990s.

“Their domestic help Rani, who used to come to the house every day at 1.30pm to cook and clean, told us that a plumber working at the sisters’ house on Wednesday afternoon. Both Rani and the plumber left the house around 4pm,” Upadhyay said.

When Rani visited the house around 1.30 pm on Thursday, she allegedly found the door of the flat unlocked. “According to Rani, it was not the first occasion that the sisters had left the door unlocked,” said Upadhyay.

Inside, she found the two sisters lying dead on the floor. “They had been strangulated as well as struck on the heads with something hard. Their house was ransacked,” said Seju P Kuruvilla, deputy commissioner of police, (outer Delhi). Kuruvilla, however, denied reports that the limbs of the sisters were tied.

Immediately after, Rani raised an alarm and the police were informed of the incident. “It seems to be a friendly entry into the house. So far, it appears to be the role of someone known to the women,” said Kuruvilla.

The DCP said they are going through to CCTV camera footage from the neighbourhood for clues. The police had not made any breakthrough at the time of filing this report.

Upadhyay said that the family of the victims have been informed about the incident.

First Published: Oct 26, 2018 16:08 IST