Madanapalle: The highly educated couple allegedly bludgeoned their two young daughters to death with a blunt weapon at their house in Shiva Nagar on Sunday at Madanapalle in Chittoor district for ‘Superstitious power’.

According to the Madanapalle DSP Ravi Manohara Chary, the parents of Alekhya (27) and Sai Divya (22) Padmaja and Purushottam Naidu beaten them to death with dumbbell. Their elder daughter Alekhya completed her Master’s degree in Bhopal, while the younger one Sai Divya did BBA. Divya who was a student of AR Rehman Music School in Mumbai, returned home after the Covid- 19 induced lockdown.

Madanapalle DSP said the family members had been behaving strangely since the outbreak of Covid-19 by confining themselves to their house most of the time. On hearing strange and loud noises from the house, locals alerted the police. Initially, the couple prevented the police from entering the house. When the police entered the house, they found one of the girls lying dead in puja room, while the other in another room covered with red colour cloth and some puja material around her body.

“During our preliminary investigation, the couple seem to be highly superstitious as they asked us to keep the bodies in the house for a day stating that their daughters would come back to life,’’ the DSP said. The couple also told the police that they received a divine message to sacrifice their daughters as the Kali Yuga was going to end tonight and they would get rebirth tomorrow in the beginning of Satya Yuga. With much difficulty, the police shifted the bodies to the government hospital for postmortem. The couple was taken into custody for questioning. The Couple Padmaja and Purushottam Naidu are working as a correspondent of a private school and principal of women’s degree college in the town. Police was investigating the case.