At least six persons including three women of the same family were shot dead and around the same number were seriously injured in a bloody clash over a land dispute and old enmity between two families in a village in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh on Friday morning.
According to police, the incident took place in Lepa village in Sihoniya area of Morena at about 10 am.
Sources said the family of Gajendra Singh Tomar and Ranjeet Singh Tomar had an old dispute with the family of Radhe Singh Tomar and Dheer Singh Tomar.
Today morning, Radhe and Dheer’s family members armed with rifles and wooden sticks attacked the house of Gajendra and Ranjeet.
The assailants brutally thrashed men and women of the house and subsequently opened fire on them.
Some videos of the incident, in which some men were seen firing with rifles upon some others, went viral.
According to sources, Gajendra Singh Tomar and his son Sanju Tomar were shot dead along with Phundo Tomar and three women of the family.
Besides, Virendra Tomar, Vinay Tomar and his wife and two others were seriously injured, sources said.
On receiving information about the incident, a heavy police force was rushed to the village. The assailants, meanwhile, fled from the spot.
Field-level police officers were not able to provide the incident details till evening. Sihoniya Police Station House Officer (SHO) Ruby Tomar claimed she was present on the spot since morning but she was unable to give names of any of the deceased or the names of the accused members from the other family.
Sources said the mass killings were possibly carried out over a 10-year-old land dispute between the two families. In 2013, Gajendra Singh’s family members were accused and arrested for allegedly murdering three members of Dheer Singh’s family over the same land dispute.
Sources said today’s attack was carried out to take revenge for those murders.
Some reports quoted Morena Inspector General of Police (IGP) S Saxena saying that police have identified eight people allegedly involved in today’s killings and a case was being registered while further investigations were on in the matter.
Meanwhile, expressing shock at the incident, Madhya Pradesh Congress Chief Kamal Nath alleged that the BJP state government had failed in handling the law and order situation in the state while such serious incidents were continuously occurring in the state.