Hyderabad: A mother in Andhra Pradesh who battered her two daughters to death has now claimed to be Hindu deity Shiva and that COVID-19 came from her body particles.
The police are now planning to move the woman and her husband to a bigger hospital in Tirupati.
A local court in Madanpalle remanded the couple – Assistant Professor in Chemistry V Purushottam Naidu and his wife and school principal V Padmaja - to 14-day judicial custody and were lodged in local sub-jail. When the parents, who were arrested by the police after the brutal murder of their daughters 27-year-old Alekhya and 22-year-old Sai Divya in Mandanapalle town of Chittoor district, on Sunday night were produced before the judge, the woman continued to behave like she was in trance blabbering incoherent sentences.
Police found the battered and bloodied bodies of the two girls lying in a pool of blood in their home. Police found several tell-tale marks of religious rituals in the house suggesting that the double murder was related to some superstitious beliefs. The heads of the girls were half tonsured and there were marks of vermillion on them. There were small silver pots in their mouths. Police say the two girls were naked when they were killed but were later draped in red sarees.
Police investigating the case say the daughters were murdered under some superstitious belief that they would be reborn in a “new and better age”.
Before being produced in the court when the couple were taken to the government hospital in Madanapalle, Padmaja refused to undergo any coronavirus test. “I am Lord Shiva. Coronavirus came from my body particles. Not from China. I won’t undergo any test,” she shouted at the team of doctors and nurses. When a police official counselled her to give a swab test, she shouted back, “Who are you to advise me”. She also claimed that COVID-19 would go away in March on its own. When her husband tried to intervene she pushed him away. “You are not my husband”, she declared.
Later medical staff collected the sample forcibly and she was shifted to court.
Purushottam Naidu, on the other hand, cooperated with the authorities in undergoing the coronavirus test.
In the sub-jail both the husband and wife refused to eat anything as if observing a fast.
Trance
Police officials said that the woman continued to be under some trance or delusion and they were now planning to shift her to a hospital in Tirupati town for further examination and treatment.
Deputy Superintendent of Police Ravi Manohara Chari said that the police had approached the court for permission to take her to Tirupati hospital.
Dr. Radhikha, a psychiatrist in Madanapalle hospital, told the media that the mental and psychological condition of the parents was not good. “But they can come out of the trance if treated properly”.
Police have booked a murder case against the couple under Section 302 of Indian Penal Code naming the father and mother as first and second accused.
The police team was going through CCTV footage of the past week to establish the goings on at the place leading to the incident. Police say that the two girls were battered to death by the mother using a trident and dumbbells.
