In a brutal act, a 72-year-old man in a Chhattisgarh village on Sunday strangled his 10-year-old granddaughter to death for plucking a mango from a tree in his orchard.
According to the police, Jyoti Jain, a student of Class 5 in a local government school, just playfully climbed a tree in the backyard of their house and collected a mango, ignoring repeated warnings by her grandfather Iswar Jain not to venture into their orchard.
Furious at his granddaughter for defying his diktat, Iswar pulled the girl by her neck and allegedly smothered her to death in the public view of local villagers. Later, the locals informed the police about the incident leading to his arrest.
“The local villagers gave eyewitness accounts of Iswar strangulating his granddaughter to death. We have sent the body for post-mortem and arrested him on charge of murder,” the investigating officer R.P. Singh said while talking to this newspaper.
When contacted, the local sarpanch S.K. Sahoo, said the girl lost her mother three years ago and his father, a daily wage earner, has left her with his parents to take her care.
“The entire population in the village is reeling under acute poverty. Mangos are selling at a price as high as `150 per kilo in the area. Hence, Iswar was possessive about his mango orchard and appeared to have lost his mental balance out of anger when he saw his granddaughter pluck a mango from the tree,” he said.