Haryana farmer, wife found dead in Chhattisgarh village

A 42-year-old farmer from Haryana and his wife were found dead on Friday with their bodies bearing injury marks inflicted with a blunt object in a village in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon district, police said.

Their bodies were found inside a makeshift room erected on a farmland which the couple had taken on lease for cultivation in Karela village under Ghumka police station limits, a police official said.

A land-related dispute is suspected to be the reason behind the murders, he said.

The deceased, identified as Mahaveer Singh Jaat and his wife Meenakshi (37), hailed from Haryana and had taken 28 acres of agriculture land belonging to local resident Vanirao Deshmukh on lease for farming two years back and the couple was staying there in a makeshift room, he said.

Their families reside in Kaithal district of Haryana, the official added.

On Friday morning, when labourers hired by Jaat reached the farm for work, they found the room locked from outside, following which they informed Deshmukh and launched a search for the couple, he said.

On being alerted, a police team rushed to the spot and broke the lock of the room and found their bodies lying in a pool of blood, he said.

“Injuries marks caused by a blunt object were found on the heads of the two deceased. The bodies were sent for postmortem and a report is awaited,” the official added.

As per preliminary information, Jaat had also taken land on lease in two villages of neighbouring Balod district of the state and Katni in Madhya Pradesh for cultivation, he said.

“Prima facie, it seems they have been killed over a land-related dispute. However, an investigation was underway from all possible angles after registering a case against unidentified assailants”, he added.