Superstition claims infant’s life, grandfather arrested for murder

A 58-year-old man, Veeramuthu, was arrested on charges of allegedly murdering his infant grandchild due to a superstitious belief that the child had brought ill omen upon the family

A 58-year-old man, Veeramuthu, was on Monday arrested on charges of allegedly murdering his infant grandchild due to a superstitious belief that the child had brought ill omen upon the family. The crime occurred at Utkottai near Jayamkondam in Ariyalur district.

Police said the child, Sathwik, was born last month to Veeramuthu’s daughter Sangeetha and her husband Balamurugan. Veeramuthu had reportedly taken loans from a few persons for his performing his daughter’s marriage a year ago. She delivered a boy in the Tamil month of Chithirai.

According to police, Veeramuthu had been seen unhappy since the birth of Sathwik, as some inhabitants of the village had told him that the birth of a male child in Chithirai would not bode well for the family. Around the time of the child’s birth, moneylenders had also pressured Veeramuthu to repay the loan.

Since he believed that the financial trouble that he and his family members were facing could be because of the child’s ‘ill omen’, he decided to kill Sathwik, the police added.

Police said Veeramuthu took his grandson, when his family members were asleep in the early hours of Friday and threw him along with a blanket in a barrel filled with water in the bathroom. He subsequently closed the barrel with a lid in order to arrest the sound of cry.

After dawn break, he made a hue and cry over the missing child. His family members searched for the child in different places and eventually found the body in the barrel.

On being informed, the Jayamkondam police visited the house and sent the child’s body to the Government Hospital in Jayamkondam for the postmortem. During investigation, Veeramuthu allegedly confessed to have killed the child.