(Representative image)

BATHINDA: A resident of a Bathinda village and his mother administered electric shocks to his two children to exorcise them, leading to their death on Wednesday night.

Kulwinder Singh (30), a carpenter's helper from Kotfatta village in Bathinda, was carrying out this “purification ritual“ for the third day in a row at the instance of his mother Nirmal Kaur, who believed that the former's two children -5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter-were possessed by ghosts or demons. On Wednesday , things went wrong as Kulwinder increased the duration and in tensity of the shocks, police said. The mother and son used to lock the children's mother, Amarjit Kaur, in a room before they performed the ritual.

Even though the woman used to pound hard on the door to be let out and screamed for help, the neighbours did not heed her cries as they were scared of Nirmal's “divine powers“. On late Wednesday evening, the villagers were roused by the bone-chilling cries of pain of the children and the agonising screams of their mother, but were too scared to intervene. However, sensing that things appeared to be worse than previous occasions, they called the police.The cops reached the village at around 8.30pm and went in, only to find the children dead.They then arrested the children's father and their grandmother.

According to cops, Nirmal had also brainwashed Kulwinder into believing that nothing would go wrong, and even if it did, she would bring back the children to life.

