Early on Monday morning, a resident of Piravom in Kochi was devastated when she woke up to see her husband and both their children dead at their residence.

Sandhya had just regained consciousness after her husband Rejimon, a pastor, had hit her with a wooden plank the night before, when a quarrel over dowry took a bad turn.

Sandhya’s 12-year-old daughter Alphiya was founding hanging from a window, while 15-year-old son Abhinav was found dead on his bed. Her husband, 38-year-old Rejimon was found hanging in the hall of the house.

According to reports, the police believe that Rejimon hanged Alphiya and strangled Abhinav to death. This was following his quarrel with his wife Sandhya, who fell unconscious after he hit her on Sunday night.

Fearing that he had killed Sandhya, Rejimon is believed to have killed both their children and ended his own life. However, the police did not recover any suicide note from the house. 

Rejimon, a pastor with Idukki-based Church of God, used to have frequent fights with Sandhya over dowry, which led the neighbours to ignore it on Sunday night.

The neighbours took Sandhya, an office assistant, to a private hospital in Kochi on Monday morning, after which she was discharged the same day.