MULTAN, May 9: Police are groping in the dark to resolve the mystery of a double murder in which a woman and her four-year-old daughter were found slain at Shalimar Colony here on Saturday night.

The bodies of Sadaf, 30, and her daughter Roma were found from their house when her husband Raheel returned in the evening from the Hussain Aagahi Bazaar, where he ran an outlet of embroidered outfits.

Raheel rang the doorbell but no one responded. However, his one-and-half-year old son Uzaifa was crying inside. After becoming impatient, he scaled the outer wall of the house and was shocked to see Roma lying slaughtered in a bedroom while Sadaf in the kitchen.

Uzaifa, however, was crying unscathed near the body of his mother. Police investigators found a jug full of soft drink and two mugs in the drawing room while none of the valuables were missing though the killers tried to give impression of a dacoity-turned-murder by pulling out clothes from cupboards of rooms.

Gulgashat police have registered a case on the report of Sadaf's brother Kamran Asharf against two unidentified culprits. Neighbours Fahad and Younas had seen two men coming out of the house where the murders were reported.

They say they can identify the two suspicious persons on seeing them again. A police source said that the investigators had assumed that the killers were known to the family because Sadaf offered them soft drinks.

He said the police had taken into custody some people for interrogation on the lines of intra-family dispute.