Shabnam and her boyfriend Salim in police custody. (PTI)

Lucknow, April 19: A teenaged girl and her boyfriend murdered seven members of her family for opposing their relationship in a region where young lovers are often victims of “honour killings” by their families, police said.

The April 14 massacre in Amroha, western Uttar Pradesh, was initially put down to a land dispute and had chief minister Mayavati rushing to the house to offer 17-year-old Shabnam Ali Rs 5 lakh in compensation.

Officers today said Shabnam — arrested this morning with Salim, 22 — had laced her family’s tea with sedatives after dinner on Monday. Salim had then walked in with an axe and hacked to death Shabnam’s mother Asmi, 50, father Shaukat, 55, her two brothers, sister-in-law and cousin Radhia, 15.

The seventh and last victim was the one-and-a-half-year-old son of Shabnam’s eldest brother.

Shabnam has told the police the baby had watched the six murders, crying all the while, deputy inspector-general (Moradabad) Badri Prasad said.

“She said, ‘The baby kept crying but Salim told me he must not be touched. But I was scared, so I throttled him myself’,” Prasad said.

A similar crime had taken place in Calcutta 15 years ago, when a young woman, Sudipa Pal, served cyanide-laced sweets to her parents and grandparents who had found out about her relationship with her private tutor, Ranadhir Basu.

Sudipa later implicated Ranadhir, who had plotted the murders, and Krishnendu Jana, who supplied the poison.

The more grisly Amroha murders, which left Shabnam as the family’s sole living member, had created a sensation and prompted Mayavati to order that a police outpost be set up in the locality, Bhavan Khedi.

Prodded by the chief minister, district superintendent of police Beena Bhukesh set up a high-level probe team led by inspector-general Gurbachan Lal and DIG Prasad. Shabnam told the investigators the killers had missed her because she had been sleeping on the terrace.

But her cellphone records showed calls to Salim immediately after the murders and the police got suspicious. “She broke down under grilling and confessed,” Prasad said.

The axe has been fished out of a pond, and the police have seized the bloodstained clothes the couple wore on the night of the murder.

Shabnam’s rich, land-owning family used to look down on Salim, a Class VI dropout who operated a farmer’s grass-cutting machine. Shabnam had done her plus two and her parents were looking for a match for her.

“When her parents learnt about the relationship, they stopped her from meeting Salim. This angered them and provoked them to plot the murders,” state director-general of police Vikram Singh said.

Officers admitted that many young lovers had been killed in western Uttar Pradesh by criminals hired by their parents.

“Love is not encouraged in these parts. But the massacre of a family by a young couple is unusual,” SP Beena Bhukesh said.