ISLAMABAD, Dec 20: A couple was found slaughtered in their rented house at the Malikabad locality of Dhoke Abbasi in the jurisdiction of the Tarnol police early Thursday.

The deceased were identified as Nazeer Rashid, 20, and his wife Ambreen Nazim, 19. Nazeer, who worked as an auto-technician in Sara-i-Kharboza area of the city,  was a native of Sargodha while his wife was from Faisalabad. They married in 2010 and had a one-year-old daughter.

Mohammad Hanif, a resident of the same locality, reported to the police that in a house in his street a child was continuously crying. He said he knocked at the door of the house but there was no response from inside.

Police officials reached the house and broke the door open and found the bodies of the couple in the bedroom. The bodies were lying on the mattress with blood spreading all over the room.

The couple had been slaughtered with a dagger, said the police. The one-year-old daughter of the couple was holding the arm of her mother and crying.

The police handed over the baby to a woman in the neighbourhood and informed the families of the deceased.

The police said the families were relatives and they had no enmity with each other.

A senior police officer said they were investigating if the couple had any issue with the owner of the house or it was an honour killing.

“It cannot be a case of robbery because the deceased had nothing for which one could kill two persons. The nature of killing shows that there was hate and anger behind it,” he said.People living in the locality told the police that they had not heard any noise nor seen anyone going in or coming out of the house. “We are investigating if there was tension between Nazir and any other person or someone had resisted their marriage,” he said.

There is also a possibility that some relatives might have come to see the couple and given them tranquilisers before killing them.

Sher Ahmed, the police investigation officer, told Dawn that the families of the couple had ruled out the possibility of enmity behind the murder. However, the owner of the house will be investigated, he added.

Dr Farrukh, the medico-legal officer at Pims, said postmortem on the bodies had been done and samples collected to ascertain if poison or any intoxicating drug had been given to the couple.