HYDERABAD: A woman in Secunderabad said she killed her minor daughters to "relieve them" of harassment by her husband, Gopalapuram Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Shiva Kumar said on Thursday, The Hindu reported.

It is yet to be ascertained what drove the woman to kill her children, the ACP said. The woman has been taken into custody and is being interrogated.

The woman, who lived with her husband, daughters, sister-in-law and mother-in-law, alleged that she was worried as her elder daughter would get scared when she saw her father, and that "her husband behaved wrongly with the girl", the ACP said.

She allegedly took one of her daughters to the bathroom and slit her throat using a broken glass bottle on Wednesday night and later murdered her other daughter in a similar fashion in the bedroom.

The woman later left her house and went to Tank Bund on foot and washed her hands somewhere near the area, the ACP said. Before returning home, she sent text messages to two family friends saying she had killed her children and relieved them of her husband's harassment, ACP Kumar said.

Her husband came home from work at around 9:30pm and found his daughters dead. His sister and mother were unaware of the killings until he came home as they live in a separate room in the same house, the ACP said.