This is what the young mother told the police after being arrested for drowning two little girls in a reservoir in Belur Math last Tuesday. Sia was four years old and Ria was seven months old.

Seema was arrested from Chagram last night, produced in court and remanded in police custody. “She confessed that she has killed the girls because everybody, including her husband, used to mock her because she had two daughters,” said Howrah SP Niraj Kumar Singh.

Seema and her husband Kanchan had gone to Anandanagar, Liluah, with their daughters to attend a wedding on March 3, the police said. The next morning, they left for their village, Chagram. On reaching Burdwan, the elder daughter began having a stomach ache.

Kanchan asked Seema to take her to a doctor. But Seema did not go to the hospital.

Instead, she took a train and went to Belur. She first took the girls to a ghat, hoping to dump them in the river. But the area was too crowded. She then went to the Belur Math. “The evening prayers had begun and the grounds were relatively empty. She dumped her younger daughter in the water and strangled the older one,” said Singh.

According to the police, she said after dumping her daughters in the reservoir, she had gone to the banks of Ganga to commit suicide.

But the area was crowded and she took a train back to Burdwan, but did not return home. Last morning locals spotted her at the Chagram bus station and informed the police.

She was taken to a hospital, said Singh.

According to eminent psychiatrist Aniruddha Deb, it is a case of murder-suicide psychology.

He said: “The society holds a woman responsible for giving birth to a girl. This creates a suicidal tendency in her. But the idea that no one else would care for the child pushes her to murder first. The age-old stigma associated with the birth of a girl ensures that such cases are reported again and again.”

After Seema’s brother Ranjit Mondal got to know about the recovery of bodies from the Belur reservoir, he went to Bally police station, identified the girls and informed Kanchan. Only then, Kanchan admitted that his wife was also missing for a couple of days, said police.