Hyderabad, Oct. 4: A nurse connived with her sister and injected their 59-year-old mother with the HIV virus to get hold of the family property, police in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur district town suspect.

Kameswari, 32, and Durga, 35, had been harassing their parents to hand them the property — two houses, 25 acres of land and some gold, the police said. But the parents said the daughters would have to wait till one of them was dead. When the mother came down with cough and fever last month, Kameswari, a nurse in the local government hospital, took her to see a doctor and later gave her an injection telling her it was the “latest antibiotic” for high fever, the police added. The fever subsided, but the older woman started suffering from severe joint pain and weakness.

On Gandhi Jayanti, she got her blood tested at a free medical camp in her locality and was stunned to find she was HIV positive. She and her 62-year-old husband rushed to doctors with reports of tests done a few months ago and last year, which did not show any infection, and came to the conclusion that she must have contracted the virus recently.

The treatment for the fever last month and the injection given — the mother recalled that it was a red fluid, which the police now suspect was infected blood — was discussed and the couple tried to ask Kameswari about it. But neither Kameswari nor Durga would speak to their parents, the police said. The couple today approached district collector Ramanjaneyulu and rural superintendent of police Ravichandra for help. The district collector ordered an inquiry and suspended Kameswari from duty immediately. The superintendent directed Broadipet police station to register a case under the Domestic Violence Act, 2005.

“We will arrest the daughters. I am shocked at the incident,” Ravichandra said. Kameswari and Durga have gone missing, the police added.

The mother said today “both the daughters were sweet to me”. “I never suspected such foul play even though I was aware their heart burns for the property and my gold,” she said. This is the second such incident in Guntur town, 325km from Hyderabad, this year. A few months ago, a housewife was injected with HIV-infected blood by her husband, a doctor, in a dowry demand case.