Woman Drowns Her 5 Kids In River Following An Altercation With Husband

A woman in Bhadohi district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh threw her five children, including a 3-year-old boy, into a river Saturday following a duel with her husband.

It was initially speculated that a dire food scarcity due to the coronavirus lockdown in the country prompted her to take the extreme step but the police later clarified that the lockdown had no role to play in it.

Police rushed to the Jahagirabad Ghat located off the banks of River Ganges and divers were deployed to help locate the children who they said were feared drowned, local publication Hindusthan Times reported. Two bodies of the children, aged 12 and 10, were recovered by the divers. Police said the woman also jumped into the river but later changed her mind and swam back to the shore. She was found sitting on the banks of the river when officials arrived.

Police said the woman, identified as Manju, had an altercation with her husband, identified as Mridul aka Munna, with regard to the household expenses before pushing her children, Shiv Shankar (8), Keshav Prasad (3), Puja aka Saraswati (6), and two others aged 10 and 12, into the river. Although police officials were questioning Manju’s mental state, her husband said she was mentally fit. She was arrested Sunday.

Manju and her husband quarreled over domestic expenses frequently but this time she opted to kill her children by drowning them in the river, Superintendent of Police Ram Badan Singh said. The children raised an alarm to the nearby fishers when Manju brought them to the Jahagirabad Ghat on Saturday evening, but they fled believing her to be a witch, according to local sources. She sat on the place overnight and informed the villagers about the incident the next morning.

Manju worked as a daily wage earner, who are the worst affected section during the lockdown the country imposed to stem the further spread of COVID-19. At least 92.5% laborers have so far lost their one to three weeks of livelihood to the ongoing lockdown, with over 80% of the country’s migrant and daily-wage population fearing a prospect of starvation before the end of the lockdown, according to a survey by Jan Sahas, a nonprofit.