Cuttack, March 11: A woman allegedly immolated herself after burning her two-year-old son near Pratapnagari on the ouskirts of the city over family feud.

The incident has been reported from Khalarda village under Sadar police limits, around 15km from here. The deceased have been identified as Sandhya Rani Jena (25) and her son Abhijit alias Sibun (2).

According to reports, Sandhya Rani, wife of Subodh Jena, killed her son before setting herself afire. Both the bodies were found inside the courtyard of Khaleswar temple today. It is suspected that the incident occurred at around 2:30am last night.

“A local autorickshaw driver first informed me about a fire inside the temple. Later, I rang up the sarpanch and rushed to the spot along with some local residents and found both the bodies,” said Khageswar Nayak (37), priest of the temple.

Neither the family members nor neighbours saw Sandhya Rani moving out of her house late last night. The neighbours said that the couple, who stayed at Sinhala, about 2km away from the temple, had some problems between them.

The family members of the deceased have alleged that Sandhya Rani had been killed by her in-laws for dowry. “They used to torture my sister for dowry. Though we had paid Rs 50,000 at the time of her marriage in 2008, the demands kept on increasing. Recently, I gave them a colour television,” said Prabhat Jena (32), Sandhya Rani’s brother, who works as a medicine distributor in Bhubaneswar.

Police have begun investigation and a kerosene jar, a match box and some other articles have been recovered from the spot.

Police have detained Kedar Jena, elder brother of the deceased’s husband Subodh, who is absconding. Subodh works as a bus conductor.

The in-laws have refuted the allegations of dowry torture. “We do not know anything because we were asleep. It was only in the morning that I came to know about the incident. Though there were some problems between the couple but that is not why she would commit suicide,” said Kedar Jena.

“Based on the complaint lodged by the family members of the deceased, we have registered a dowry death case under section 498 (A), 304, 302, 34, IPC/4 Dowry Prohibition Act and investigation is on,” a police officer of Cuttack Sadar police station said.

Police have sent both the bodies for autopsy.