An 80-year-old woman was reportedly murdered with sharp-edged weapons by unidentified attackers while she was asleep in a cowshed outside her house in the Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday night.

According to a report by Indian Express, police stated that her body, bearing multiple injuries, was found unclothed on a cot. While family members and residents suspect she may have been raped before being killed, the police have neither confirmed nor ruled out the possibility.

Woman's Nephew Filed FIR

As per the First Information Report (FIR) filed by her nephew, the elderly woman had dinner last night and then went to sleep in the cattle shed, a routine she followed to protect her livestock. Having no children of her own, she had adopted her nephew.

The nephew told police adding that his wife went to wake the woman at around 5:30 AM on Thursday and discovered her lying in a pool of blood. She covered the body with a blanket and alerted her husband, who then informed the police. Authorities arrived at the scene and sent the body for postmortem examination.

“We have lodged the FIR against unidentified assailants. The local residents and family members have expressed apprehension that she might have been raped before being killed. The details of the postmortem will be known later,” the station house officer of the local police station said.

Police revealed that the woman’s husband passed away in 2020, and she had been living with her adopted nephew’s family. She had already declared him as the legal heir to her property.

“We have yet to collect any concrete evidence from the site. This is definitely a very sensitive incident, and we have formed police teams to arrest the culprits soon. A forensic team and the dog squad have been pressed into service to collect the minutest evidence which can help us nab the killers,” Chiranjeev Nath Sinha, Superintendent of Police (SP), Hathras added.