A 47-year-old woman and her 22-year-old daughter were found dead, with knife wounds, in their house in Maduravoyal on Thursday morning.
Some gold jewellery was also missing from the bodies. The police, however, suspect a personal motive behind the murders and said the jewellery may have been stolen to mislead investigators.
Other gold ornaments and cash kept in the safe, and other valuables, were intact.
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The police have narrowed down their search to a couple of unidentified men filmed by a CCTV camera installed in a house on the adjoining street.
Vimala Devi and her daughter Pavithra were by themselves in their house on Nagendran Street in Karthikeyan Nagar of Maduravoyal when the murder took place, between 9.30 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Thursday.
The house has a large gate eclipsing the main portion of the building from the busy stretch of Nagendran Street.
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Pavithra, an employee of a BPO in Kilpauk, had got back after night duty around 5 a.m. on Thursday.
Sukumaran (25), the elder son of Vimala and her husband Samikannu, works at a BPO in Aminjikarai. He had left for work around 9.30 a.m.
“I had just returned from the ration shop around 11 a.m. when I heard the loud cries of Samikannu. I ran into their house and found Vimala lying in a pool of blood near the refrigerator at the entrance of the kitchen,” said Mallika, a neighbour.
Pavithra was found dead on the bedroom floor with stab injuries in the neck. Her five-sovereign gold chain was missing. Devi’s throat was slit and her 10-sovereign chain was missing, the police said.
Samikannu runs Pavithra Hotel on Mettukuppam Main Road in Maduravoyal and Vimala often joined him there around 10 a.m. after seeing off their son to work.
“On Thursday, Samikannu repeatedly called on the mobile phones of his wife and daughter. Since there was no response from either of them, he went home only to find them dead and the house ransacked,” said Vimala’s brother Kasinathan, who works as a call-taxi driver.
S. Xavier Dhanaraj, deputy commissioner (Anna Nagar), who visited the crime scene, said, “There are no signs of a forced entry. So, the suspects were probably known to the victims,” he said.
The footage from the neighbouring house that has two CCTV cameras mounted on its gate — one of which faces the road leading to Samikannu’s house — shows two men passing by Samikannu’s house, around the time of the murders.
“The mobile phone records of the victims are being examined. Pavithra’s co-workers and the cab driver who dropped her after work are being questioned,” the police said.