Burdwan/Howrah, March 5: A mother was arrested to-night for allegedly killing her two infant daughters, found floating in a pond inside Belur Math last evening.

Seema Soi said this morn- ing that Riya, 4, and nine-month-old Shreya went missing yesterday after she fell unconscious drinking water offered by a rickshaw-puller.

She apparently regained consciousness at Burdwan town’s Tinkonia bus stand around 8am today.

Police did not buy the story. Her husband Kanchan, six relatives, and Sajal Dutta, a clerk at the nursing home where she was treated today, have been detained.

Additional superintendent of police S.K. Jain and the officer-in-charge of Bally police station, under whose jurisdiction falls Belur, went to Burdwan tonight to bring all those held to Howrah.

Kanchan, of Cha village in Khandaghosh, 25km from Burdwan town, had identified his daughters’ bodies.

He told the police Seema had gone to attend her sister’s wedding at Anandanagar in Liluah, 5km from the Math, on Sunday.

On the way back home, she reached Burdwan station with mother-in-law Mayarani and other relatives around 1pm yesterday.

“Riya complained of stomach cramps at the station and Seema told the rest she would take her to a doctor and return home. She took a rickshaw from the station and went to the doctor’s chamber but found it closed,” Kanchan said.

Seema was apparently heading to the Tinkonia bus stand on another rickshaw when Riya started crying for water.

“I was not carrying water. When we reached a narrow lane, the rickshaw-puller stopped the vehicle and brought a glass from somewhere. Riya took a few sips and, being thirsty, I finished it off,” she said.

Minutes later, Riya allegedly became drowsy and her mother started feeling unwell.

“When the rickshaw had just reached Tinkonia, I lost my consciousness,” the mother said.

“I woke up on a road at the bus stand, near a cluster of tea stalls and eateries, this morning. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where my children were. My handbag was missing,” Seema said, breaking down in tears at the Burdwan police station.

The handbag had Rs 600 and some jewellery.

Seema said local residents offered her tea and biscuits and she called her husband from one of their phones.

Kanchan, a surveyor of a private construction consultancy firm, said he could not go to the wedding because he did not get leave. “I rushed to Burdwan as soon as I received my wife’s call.”

Kanchan and his relatives took Seema to the nursing home and then to the police station to lodge a complaint. They did not apparently know then that the girls had been found dead in Belur.

Burdwan police took Seema along the route her rickshaw apparently took and found loose ends in her version of incidents.

“We suspect Kanchan and Seema are hiding something,” Burdwan inspector-in-charge Prasun Banerjee said before Seema had been arrested.

Burdwan deputy superintendent (headquarters) Jane Alam said: “How is it possible that she lay their through yesterday afternoon and evening without being noticed by anyone? We have plainclothesmen there.”

The post-mortem reports would be crucial, said Howrah superintendent of police Niraj Kumar Singh.