A vegetable vendor in Purulia found his wife and three minor daughters dead at their home on his return from work on Thursday night.
The incident on Thursday night happened at Latapara, a village near the Bengal-Jharkhand border, under the jurisdiction of the Bandawan police station.
The police said vendor Ananda Gorai, 36, had gone to a weekly market in Jharkhand to sell vegetables on Thursday morning. Ananda’s wife Piya Gorai, 30, daughters Baisakhi, 13, Pallabi, 10, Sourabhi, 6, and his elderly father were at home as usual.
Ananda’s father Raghunath Gorai, 62, said he had last seen Piya around 8pm on Thursday when she had gone to his room to ask when he would take his dinner.
“I told her that I was not feeling well and would skip dinner. I asked her not to cook anything for me as I already had puffed rice and water,” he said.
He lived in a separate room of their single-storey mud house at Latapara. Piya lived in another room with the husband and her children. The kitchen and store rooms are located in the third and fourth rooms of the house.
When Ananda returned home around 10pm, Raghunath opened the door of the courtyard. As he went to the room, he found his three daughters lying on the bed, while Piya lay on the floor unconscious. All of them were foaming at the mouth. The door of the room was closed but not locked.
“I immediately informed my neighbours, who helped me take all of them to a nearby rural hospital, but doctors declared all of them dead on arrival,” said Ananda.
The bodies were sent for postmortem to Purulia Medical College and Hospital.
Sources said doctors at the hospital suspected that the deceased had consumed something poisonous.
An investigating officer at the Bandawan police station said all possible angles would be looked into.
Everyone in the small village was in a state of shock after the tragedy. “I saw the three children playing with other children of the locality in the evening. We are all shocked,” said a neighbour.