Two children were charred to death and their parents suffered serious burn injuries on Sunday night after their house at Baluganj was bolted from outside and set on fire while they were sleeping.

The deceased were identified as Dipika (5) and Abhishek (3). Their parents - Divyanand Goshak and Nilam Devi - are being treated at a private hospital at Siliguri in Bengal.

Divyanand runs a teashop in the village under the jurisdiction of Balrampur police station, around 390km northeast of Patna. His house was constructed under the Indira Awas Yojana.

Ruling out the possibility of accident, police said the house was set on fire intentionally because its doors were bolted from outside.

"Prima facie it is a murder case and the family appears to have been targeted. Else, the house would not have been bolted from outside," Katihar superintendent of police Kshatranil Singh told The Telegraph.

He said the reason behind the act of setting the house on fire would be known only after detailed investigation. "For now, we have started investigation to find out the persons who had set the house on fire after bolting its doors from outside," the officer said.

The SP said villagers rushed to the house and tried to rescue the family seeing the flames. "But the two children had died by then," Singh told PTI.

Dilip Goshak, the brother of Divyanand (whose house was set on fire), said the latter did not have enmity with anyone. "The exact reason behind the incident would be known only after my brother regains consciousness and shares the details of the incident," said Dilip, also a resident of Baluganj.

Dilip said the condition of his brother and sister-in-law was critical.

A PTI report claimed that Divyanand and Nilam had also succumbed to injuries, but the police said they were unaware of any such development.

A neighbour of Divyanand said the fire victims were cordial. "They (Divyanand and Nilam) are unlikely to have enmity with anybody. It's shocking that some criminals set Divyanand's house on fire. The police should go all-out to arrest the perpetrators of the heinous crime in which two infants lost their lives," said the villager sobbing in front of the charred house.

Another villager said the timing of the fire proved fatal for the infants. "Had the house been set on fire in daytime, we could have saved the children. Two innocent lives were lost in the fire and we could do nothing to save them," he said, adding that the culprits should be booked immediately.

Katihar district magistrate Prakash Kumar said Divyanand's family would be compensated according to the rules.