Man hacks eight members of his family with axe, dies by suicide in Chhindwara shocker

A 23-year-old man in Chhindwara district in Madhya Pradesh hacked eight members of his family, including three children, to death with an axe, and then died by suicide on Tuesday night, police officers aware of the matter said. He also assaulted a 10-year-old nephew, who escaped with injuries and is being treated at a hospital in Nagpur.

The man was married eight days before the ghastly attack, and had a history of mental illness, police said.

The police team that arrived at the house where the family was killed found no evidence of a scuffle, and preliminary investigations suggested that seven of the eight people dead were attacked as they were sleeping in an open courtyard. “There is little evidence that there was any attempt to save themselves. Prima facie, it seems that the accused first attacked his 23-year-old wife with the axe on the neck in the room they were in. He then emerged into the open space where the rest of the family was sleeping, and attacked his mother, brother, sister-in-law, sister. He also attacked his 5-year-old nephew, and two nieces, aged 4 and 1. All of them were hit in the neck,” Ravindra Pawar, Mahuljhir town inspector said.

Officers added that once he had killed everyone in his house, he walked 50 metres away to his uncle’s home, and attacked his 10-year-old nephew. On this occasion however, the child woke up during the attack and cried for help. “He ran away from the spot,” Pawar said. Early in the morning, the 23-year-old was found hanging from an Amla tree, 150m away from the murder spot.

One investigator said that the bodies of the victims were sent for a post-mortem examination, and they were looking at whether the family was administered a substance to render them unconscious before the attack. “We are exploring this to understand how he could kill everyone so brutally without any resistance,” the officer said.

Chhindwara inspector general of police Anil Kushwaha said that the 23-year-old had a history of mental illness, and was carrying around the axe in the village for the past three to four days. “He was married on May 21, and had roamed with the axe for the past three to four days, but in that time, hadn’t attacked anyone, which is why no alarm was raised. The uncle’s family has informed us that even a year ago, he had undergone some treatment for mental illness which his brother was taking care of. Only his brother knew the details of the treatment. We have seized some documents from the spot and are investigating further,” Kushwaha said.

The father-in-law of the accused, however, said that when his daughter married him on May 21, they were no signs of anything untoward. “Everything was fine. He may have been on medication a year ago but he was now healthy, and worked as a labourer in Narsinghpur. The incident must be investigated thoroughly because the sequence of events raises grave doubt,” he said.

The 23-year-old’s family owns three acres of land, which was largely unirrigated and barren for most of the year, with the adults in the family all Below Poverty Line(BPL) card holders, he said.

The Madhya Pradesh Congress called for a detailed investigation and said that the crime could have been born out of “poverty and unemployment”. State president Jitu Patwari said, “It is easy to brand someone mentally ill but people in these areas are facing hardship due to poverty and unemployment. The reason behind this extreme step needs to be probed thoroughly.”

Madhya Pradesh chief minister, however, hit out at the Congress for politicising a tragedy, and said that he had sent cabinet minister Sampatiya Uikey to the spot. “The Congress should not politicise everything like this. I don’t understand why the young man got married when he was mentally unwell. I appeal to society that in the process of making a new family, do not destroy the old family,” Yadav said.