Patna: Police in Bihar state are looking for a local politician who allegedly killed five members of his family in a hotel room on Saturday evening before making good his escape.

Police say the suspect, identified as Shrawan Kumar, allegedly strangled his wife, sister-in-law and his three children, aged between three and six, with pillows shortly after they went into coma after consuming poisoned ice cream.

Police said the suspect was a highly ambitious man who had contested the last Assembly elections as an Independent candidate for the Dehri-On-Sone seat in south Bihar's Rohtas district. He lost badly, getting just 900 votes.

"We have registered a case of murder against the fleeing politician since prima facie it looks like a murder," Patna's Senior Superintendent of Police Alok Kumar told the media on Sunday.

Poisoned ice cream

The case was registered after the post-mortem report confirmed the victims were strangled after being fed poisoned ice cream.

The police also found the used ice cream cups emitting foul smell in the hotel room.

The accused had checked into the room on October 5. The police also found a laptop, Nepali currency, two cell phones without SIM cards and a business card of a Nepal-based hotel.

What has added a twist to the murder is the recovery of two suicide notes from the room.

The reason for the "suicide" given in both notes is the same: pressure from local youth from whom he had collected more than Rs10 million (Dh721,110), promising them jobs in a local factory.

While one note is dated October 18, the other one is dated October 22, but what has puzzled the police is why the suspect escaped from the scene, instead of committing suicide.

Change of mind

"The first note says the entire family is committing suicide, while the second one mentions only three of them — Shrawan, his wife and his sister-in-law — are committing suicide," said a police official.

The police believe the suspect might have initially planned to commit suicide but later changed his mind.

Clueless about the whereabouts of the accused, the police have issued photographs of the suspect for publication in the local dailies to get help from the public.