Secunderabad:
An 18-year-old mother in Andhra Pradesh has confessed that she killed her two young daughters by strangling them.
Four-year-old Samreen and two-year-old Mehek were killed on Tuesday afternoon at their home in the Secunderabad district. It was their mother, Shameena, who called the police. She originally said that someone had broken into her home and stolen some gold while she was out; this person, she suggested, had killed her girls.
But the police then found the gold she had reported missing hidden in a box along with some perfume and slippers.
After two days of questioning, Shameena confessed that she had murdered her girls. A photo found in the house had the girls' faces crossed out. She said she believed that by killing them, she would send them to "jannat" or Heaven. Shameena also claims that her in-laws were not happy that she had given birth to girls, more so because they were dark-skinned.
Shameena has told the police she was a 13-year-old in Class 8 in Wesley School in Secunderabad when she was married to 25-year-old Yaqoob, who sold garments on the footpath near Secunderabad station. Her in-laws own three small houses in the city; her parents considered Yaqoob a match attractive enough to make her drop out of school.
Shameena will go to prison later this evening. Her story is shrouded with the sort of confusion and immaturity that activists say is not uncommon among girls who are married when they are children themselves.