LAHORE: A heartless woman allegedly set her two minor sons on fire because of poverty at Kot Asadullah village in Manga Mandi area on Monday.

Abdul Rehman (3) and Faizan (4) were recovered dead with burns from a room of a three-marla house at Kot Asadullah following a fire incident reported to the Rescue 1122 emergency service.

The house was partially damaged in the fire that had engulfed a portion of the building comprising two rooms and a kitchen.

A police official said when the Rescue 1122 teams, responding to a call, rushed to the site, they noticed the smell of petrol in the house and alerted the police before shifting the bodies of the two children to hospital.

He said on being told by the Rescue 1122 team about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the incident, the police picked the parents of the deceased children for interrogation.

He said initially the mother, Tanzeela, gave conflicting statements, but on being grilled further she confessed her crime, saying her husband, a labourer, was unable to afford even the daily expenses to run the kitchen. She said frustrated by abject poverty, she first strangled her minor sons and then set the room ablaze after sprinkling petrol there.

As the fire engulfed the entire room, she gathered the neighbours telling them a false story of fire suddenly erupting in the house.

The police, after her confession, shifted the bodies to the city morgue for the postmortem examination.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2021