Mother kills 3-yr-old daughter for ‘supporting’ father watching news

Angry that her daughter took her father’s side over an argument on watching news and calling her “mad”, a woman allegedly strangled the three-year-old in West Bengaluru on Tuesday night.

Sudha concocted a story that she had taken her daughter Vinutha to eat snacks when she went missing, but police saw through her lie. Sudha works as a domestic worker and a housekeeper at a granite and tiles outlet.

A passerby found Vinutha’s body at an under-construction building at BDA Layout in Nagarabhavi Wednesday morning. The jurisdictional Annapoorneshwari Nagar police then identified the details of the dead girl. Vinutha was the only daughter of Eeranna, a labourer, and Sudha.

Sudha filed a missing person complaint with the Jnanabharathi police Tuesday night, telling the police that she took Vinutha to eat out and the girl went missing when she was buying snacks.

On learning about the missing person complaint, police summoned Eeranna and Sudha to identify the body. They grew suspicious of Sudha and asked her to show the ‘chaats’ shop they visited the previous evening. Sudha then confessed to the murder.

“I killed my daughter since she supported her father,” Sudha told her police, admitting that she strangled Vinutha with her dupatta.

Eeranna, who worked between 6 am and 8 pm, came home for lunch every day. At 2 pm Tuesday, he changed the TV channel to news. Sudha quarreled with him for watching news, asking him not to come home if he wanted to watch news. Vinutha reportedly asked Sudha to keep quiet and called her “mad”. Sudha became angry and killed Vinutha late in the evening, police said.

On returning home, Eeranna did not see Sudha and Vinutha at home. When he called Sudha, she enacted the missing story and turned off her phone till 9.30 pm. Sudha also took Vinutha to work with her and did not like her daughter telling everything that happened at work to Eeranna, including people who met her, a police officer said.