Four persons of a family were killed on Monday morning in connection with a family dispute in Gandhi Nagar locality under Dhansar Police station less than five km away from Dhanbad district headquarters.

The incident came to light when Sudhir Kumar Raj, a neighbour of the deceased Munna Yadav, woke up in the middle of the night and found blood coming out of Yadav’s room.

He then went over to the house and found Munna Yadav and his step son, Rahul Yadav (22); his wife, Mina Devi (43) and his son Rohit Yadav (14) lying in a pool of blood.

Raj informed other neighbours, including the General Secretary of Federation of Dhanbad Zila Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ajay Narayan Lal and they reached the site with a Dhansar police team.

The police team broke open the door and found all four persons lying in a pool of blood. The police team also recovered a dagger lying under the body of Rahul Yadav suggesting that he killed his mother, step father and step brother before dying by suicide.

Police collected some samples from the site with the help of forensic experts and sent all the four bodies for post mortem at Sahid Nirmal Mahto Memorial Medical College and Hospital.

Officer-in-charge Jairam Prasad said, “Prima facie it seems that Rahul Yadav has killed the other three members of the family with the dagger before committing suicide but more investigation in this regard is pending.”

“Rahul seems to be unhappy with the second marriage of his mother Mina Devi with Munna Yadav and used to stay away and arrived at the Gandhi road resident of his mother about a month ago and probably killed his mother and step father and step son before dying by suicide,” said Prasad.

Sudhir Kumar Raj,who first spotted the blood coming out of the house of Mahendra Yadav said, “Everything was normal in the family till last night and we also never came to know about any dispute among the family members especially between Mahendra Yadav and his wife, Mina Devi.”

General Secretary of Federation of Dhanbad Zila Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ajay Narayan Lal said, “We in the locality are stunned after coming to know about the incident of death of four family members in our neighborhood as Munna Yadav had no animosity with anyone as per our knowledge.”