3-Year-Old Girl 'Sacrificed' By Her Father's Friend Following 'Divine Message'

A man was arrested for throwing his friend’s three-year-old daughter off the seventh floor of an apartment building because a "supernatural power" told him to do so. The incident took place in the western Indian city of Mumbai on Saturday.

The accused, identified as 43-year-old Anil Chugani, asked his friend and neigbor, Prem Hathiramani, to send his children to his apartment as he was lonely and wanted to play with them. Accordingly, Hathiramani sent his children – a six-year-old boy and twin girls – along with their nanny to Chugani’s home.

“Chugani took three-year-old Shanaya to the washroom on the pretext of having her wash her hands after eating while her nanny was preoccupied with the other children. Once inside, he allegedly flung her out of the window and she plunged to her death from the seventh storey on to a parked car. He panicked after this. He locked himself inside the bedroom and called the police,” a police officer said.

When police arrived at his apartment, the accused came out and said he was ready to be arrested. Police said the man also wanted to kill the victim’s twin sister but wasn’t able to do so as the nanny was present in the house.

During interrogation, the man confessed to the crime and said he had been facing a lot of problems since several years.

“He used to work in a garments store in Morocco, where his family members stay, and got married in 2010. Despite nearly 10 years of marriage, the couple did not have a child and he blamed a Moroccan woman for targeting him through black magic. He and his wife came back to Mumbai in May, but she left him shortly thereafter, adding to his depression. Some time during the last month, he claims to have received a ‘divine message’ which was supposed to be the solution to all his problems,” police said Tuesday.

Following this, police search his apartment and found a diary in which the accused had mentioned about killing the twins. He had mentioned the idea of offering the children as human sacrifice in order solve his life problems and had also written that a “paranormal entity” had asked him to kill the twins.

Investigation was ongoing and police said they will be recording statement of his wife and family members.