Samastipur, June 25: The body of a railway employee whose daughter was supposed to get married today was recovered from his quarters at Railway Colony with the corpses of two of his friends.

The would-be father-in-law, Bishweswar Rai (48), was allegedly hacked to death late last night with Bishwanath Rai (52) and Ramesh Rai (35), a railway employee and who negotiated the marriage.

Bishweswar’s daughter Ragini was slated to get married today to one Rajnish at Vaidyanath Temple in Deoghar, Jharkhand. Rajnish is traceless. His father, Ram Narayan, has been detained.

Ragini claimed that the groom’s family had taken a dowry of Rs 8 lakh from her parents. “They (the groom’s family) changed the wedding date a number of times, as they wanted more money,” she said.

Ram Narayan, however, claimed that he did not know anything about the wedding. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said.

Bishweswar and Bishwanath had their roots in Mukundpur Diara under Mufassil police station. Ramesh hailed from Kishanpur village under Varish Nagar police station, around 20km east from the district headquarters.

The trio were supposed to reach Deoghar for the wedding today. So was Rajnish, a panchayat teacher at Jitwarpur village, from Patna.

Darbhanga range deputy inspector-general Sudhanshu Kumar said: “No FIR has been lodged in the case but we have started investigation. As three persons were hacked to death, a number of assailants must have been involved. Since the daughter of one of the victims was supposed to get married today, the involvement of the groom’s family cannot be ruled out.”

He added that the bodies had been sent to Samastipur Sadar Hospital for post-mortem. A forensic team from Patna collected evidence from the site of the murders.