LAHORE, March 28: Three women of a family were found murdered at their house at Yousuf Park in Shahdara on Monday, while cash and gold worth Rs400,000 were also found missing. However, police believe the culprits have taken away the booty in a bid to make incident look like a robbery-cum-murder.

Mahboob Ahmad told police that he, along with his mother Sahiba, 75, and wife Rani, 37, lived in the house. His sister Seema, 40, had also joined them two months ago because of some differences with her husband.

Ahmad, who deals in cattle, said he left his house in the morning for his work, while Seema’s son, Majid, 16, also went away to visit a friend.

On his return, Majid found his maternal grandmother lying in a pool of blood in the drawing room and raised an alarm. Neighbours rushed to the house to discover that the other two women were also lying dead in another room.

On being informed, city operations police chief SSP Aftab Cheema came to the scene, along with his force, and collected evidence and recorded statements. The police said the women had been stabbed and slaughtered after being tied up and gagged.

The SSP set up three teams to investigate the killings from different aspects as the police would not believe that it was an incident of robbery-cum-murder.

“It is not the modus operandi used by robbers, who would never ever like to stay at crime scene for so long to execute a crime in this manner,” SSP Cheema said. Of other motives, estrangement issue was also being looked into, the police said, adding that a team had been dispatched to question Seema’s in-laws. The bodies were shifted to the city mortuary for autopsy. A case has been registered with no arrest.