Five days after seven persons of a family were hacked to death at Baban Kheri village in Jyotiba Phule Nagar district, the UP Police on Saturday claimed to have solved the case with the arrest of Shabnam, the lone survivor in the family, and her alleged boyfriend Salim. According to police, Shabnam (24), who works as a Shiksha Mitra, was unhappy that her parents did not approve of her relations with Salim, a school dropout. She hatched the murder plan with Salim’s help. “Both Shabnam and Salim wanted to get married. Shabnam’s family members had major objections to it and they had even prohibited her from meeting him,” DGP Vikram Singh told reporters on Saturday adding that both have confessed to the crime. The incident occurred on the intervening night of April 14 and 15 when seven members of Shabnam’s family — father Shaukat Ali (55), mother Hasmi (50), elder brother Anis Ahmed (25), sister-in-law Anjum (22), younger brother Rashid (20), nephew Arsha and cousin Raviya (15) — were hacked to death.Police officials said that they suspected Shabnam’s role in the gruesome murder, as “there was no sign of struggle between the killers and the victims at the site of crime”. After police started collecting information from the locals about Shabnam, they came to know about her relations with Salim. Salim had purchased the drug Biopose and had asked Shabnam to administer it to all the family members. “Except for the child Arsha, all the victims consumed the tea laced with Biopose,” Singh said. After her family members became unconscious, she asked Salim to come to her house with an axe. They snapped the power lines and carried out the carnage with the help of a torch. “It was around 2.05 am when Salim called Shabnam and asked her to shout so that locals could come to know about the incident,” the DGP said.
