Jaipur: A day after the arrest of Rahul Jha for the alleged murders of his wife and three daughters in the city’s Kardhani area, police Monday said he had initially planned to kill only his eldest daughter, before changing his mind and going after his wife and two other daughters as well.Police said the accused revealed during interrogation that he had become increasingly suspicious of his eldest daughter and was monitoring her activities. He reportedly blamed her for lying about her job and relationships and objected to her chatting on the phone till late at night. He is also learnt to have told interrogators that she flaunted different male companions almost every month.Deputy commissioner of police (West) Prashant Kiran told TOI that Jha’s suspicions peaked around 5.30am on Sept 11, the day of the murders, when he saw his eldest daughter cleaning utensils after apparently staying awake through the night.“He suspected that she had been speaking to a male friend despite his repeated admonishments against doing so. That’s when he decided to kill her,” a police officer involved in the investigation said.Jha, however, soon developed second thoughts about going ahead with the plan, fearful that the remaining members of his family would be left without adequate financial support if he were to be arrested for his daughter’s murder. Police said he was not confident about his wife’s ability to support the family in his absence because the earnings from her beauty parlour business were negligible.Most of all, he feared that his family would fall on hard times and end up resorting to “immoral or illegal” ways of sustaining itself, police said. Investigators said this led him to a moment of twisted logic, in which the killing of all four members of his family appeared to him as the only possible “solution”.Police said they are in the process of corroborating these claims with evidence gathered from the forensic investigation of the crime scene, CCTV footage and the sequence of events leading to the murders, as established so far.Investigators have also found no indication that the victims had been sedated before they were killed, as initially suspected. Instead, police said, they were all attacked with a cinder block as they slept.According to investigators, the killings took place between 7am and 7.20am, with Jha first attacking his wife and youngest daughter, before moving on to his other two daughters. He subsequently left home around 8.15am after serving a cup of tea to his ailing father.Jha was tracked down using CCTV footage and arrested in Reengus town of Sikar district Sunday. He was produced before a court Monday and sent to police remand for two days.
