The bodies of six members of a family who were found murdered in Madi Municipality-1, Sankhuwasabha, on Monday morning were taken to Dharan-based BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences on Tuesday for postmortem.

According to Chief District Officer Teknarayan Paudel, security personnel collected the bodies from the incident site in Kholagaun after conducting public inquiry deeds. The bodies were collected by a team of police personnel from the district headquarters, Khandbari and Dharan after 24 hours of the gruesome mass murder.

“The bodies were sent to Dharan on Tuesday. The postmortem will be carried out on Wednesday,” said Deputy Superintendent of Police Laldhwaj Subedi. “It took time for the security personnel to take the bodies to Dharan given the poor road conditions.”

The preliminary police investigation states that the assailants murdered the victims using either wooden planks, batons or iron bars. According to Superintendent of Police Nabin Kumar Rai, the spokesperson at the Province Police Office in Biratnagar, ‘blunt force’ rather than sharp weapons were used in the crime. “The victims seem to have been chased and then brutally killed,” he said.

Police had earlier on Monday suspected that sharp weapons were used in the heinous crime.

However, the investigation officers are still clueless about the murderers. A police team led by Superintendent of Police Bhim Dahal from Dharan claimed that they were closing in on the murderers. Dahal refused to divulge further details of the investigation. “Nobody has been arrested so far,” he said.

Meanwhile, an investigation team of the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police also reached the incident site on Tuesday. According to the District Police Office in Sankhuwasabha, the three-member CIB team led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Rukam Bahadur Kunwar will initiate its investigation from Wednesday.

Ninety-year-old Bauddhaman Karki, who was unhurt in the incident, said, “I am alone at 90 years of age. I cannot see and hear properly. I came to know about the incident only when the neighbours woke me up in the morning.”

According to the District Police Office, Sankhuwasabha, 55-year-old Tej Bahadur Karki, his 50-year old wife Kamala Karki; his 88-year-old mother Parbati Karki, his 25-year-old daughter-in-law Ranjana Karki, and his two grandchildren aged 11 and three were brutally killed on Monday.

Bauddhaman’s eldest son is on the way to Kholagaun from Jhapa after being informed about the tragedy. “My two other grandsons are also returning from abroad. They were working in Malaysia and Dubai,” said Bauddhaman.

Tej Bahadur, who was killed in the incident, was Bauddhaman’s youngest son.

“Security has been tightened in the border areas of the district. Police personnel have been deployed at all border points. No one from the village has been permitted to leave the district,” said Tek Narayan Paudel, the chief district officer of Sankhuwasabha.