Ayodhya, May 23

All five members of a family, including three children, all below 10 years of age, were killed in a village near here with the murderers slitting open their throats in their sleep.

The gruesome murders, in which a girl child too was done to death, were carried out at Khanpur village under the Inayatnagar police station of the district on Saturday night over a property dispute, Ayodhya’s SSP Shailesh Pandey said.

The SSP identified the victim family as that of Horilal, a Dalit resident of Khanpur village. A total of four persons were involved in the killings, the SSP added. The police, however, managed to arrest all four of them within 15 hours of the killings, he added. — PTI