Panipat/Sonepat: Inside a dingy hospital room, a shawl pulled low over her head, 32-year-old Poonam sat across from a psychiatrist and a clutch of police officers. Fresh out of three days’ police remand, she was being put through a routine psychological evaluation. Fifty simple questions meant to test her memory, comprehension, and intent. She answered some, dodged others. When the psychiatrist asked if she had killed four children – Ishika, Shubham, Jia and Vidhi – Poonam paused, then shook her head.
“I don’t know how the other three died,” she said. “I only killed Vidhi.”
Nearly 40 km away from the hospital room in Civil Hospital, in Panipat’s Naultha village and Sonepat’s Siwah, families and neighbours tell a very different story. It’s stitched together from weddings, water tanks, locked doors, and a pattern they say now feels impossible to ignore.
Poonam, a resident of Bhavad village, is accused of murdering four children between 2023 and 2025, including her own two-year-old son, by staging their deaths as accidental drownings. Haryana Police say she acted out of “jealousy” and a “deep psychological disturbance,” targeting children she believed were “more beautiful” or “better loved”. The murders, investigators say, followed a pattern: Children left alone, water containers placed just right, no signs of struggle, and deaths dismissed as tragic mishaps.
Poonam’s arrest after the death of 6-year-old Vidhi at a recent family wedding has been followed by a swift moral verdict. In her family and her village, familiar labels arrived almost on cue: psycho, occult believer, jealous woman, killer mother. Each explanation fits neatly into what society already knows how to say about women who transgress: that they are possessed, envious, unhinged, or evil.
What has received far less scrutiny is Poonam’s own shifting account: A confession followed by retraction, denial of three deaths, and a clinical assessment that finds no diagnosable mental illness. With no forensic trail yet beyond the last death, the case now sits in an uneasy space between crime and comprehension, raising harder questions about motive, agency, and the social pressures that shape how violence by women is immediately explained, even before it is understood.
“What happened in Poonam’s can be seen as how we as a society teach girls to look a certain way. They are fair, thin, and presentable. So they are acceptable to others. But we never teach them what it means to want something for themselves. In a way, these extreme scenarios are a corruption of what it means to be a woman: limited to only one’s good looks,” Neetu Sarin, a psychologist and psychoanalyst, said.
The wedding that wasn’t
In Naultha, stacked velvet chairs are all that remain of the wedding that never quite ended well.
As the wedding procession prepared to leave on 1 December, Vidhi, dressed in new clothes and darting between cousins, vanished in the chaos. For over an hour, family members searched the house, calling her name, checking rooms already cleared.
Then someone tried the terrace storeroom. It was locked from the outside. Inside, Vidhi’s body was found bent over a plastic tub, half-filled with water.
“The minute we saw her like that, we knew this wasn’t an accident,” said Satpal Singh, Vidhi’s grandfather and a retired Haryana Police sub-inspector. “And then we noticed one thing, only our daughter-in-law Poonam’s saree was wet.”
That detail, he said, changed everything.
When police began interrogating, Poonam had several explanations. But eventually, she confessed to killing the child and then came a bombshell: she had killed three others before.
Also Read: What is the beauty tyranny at play when a Panipat mother murders kids
Deaths no one questioned
The confession took the police back to February 2023. Three-year-old Ishika, Poonam’s niece, was found head-down in a plastic bucket near the bathroom at her home in Panipat. Lying nearby was Shubham, Poonam’s own son.
“There were no visible injuries. We thought they slipped,” said Naveen, Poonam’s husband. “No one imagined it could be murder.”
No autopsy was conducted. The family grieved and moved on. But Naveen said his wife didn’t.
“She behaved differently,” he said. “We thought she couldn’t take the deaths. She was not well.”
Investigators say Ishika was the intended and only target, and that Shubham was killed because he witnessed the crime. But Poonam was inconsolable after the death of her son.
“She would faint repeatedly, would cry too often, and behave as if there was something wrong,” Naveen said.
Several days later, Poonam attempted to kill herself. But during the questioning, Poonam claimed she did not know or remember what happened. She was taken to neurologists in Jind and Chandigarh, who diagnosed “shock” and the treatment continued for months. But there was no diagnosis of any mental illness back then, either.
In August 2025, the trail led to Siwah.
Poonam asked to sleep with her niece Jia, her aunt Parul recalled. Jia’s and Poonam’s houses are opposite each other.
The family agreed. Late that night, Parul saw Poonam walking up to the roof. Nothing seemed amiss, she said. By morning, Jia was missing.
After an hour-long search, Parul noticed a cloth floating in the water tank. Jia’s body was found with her head submerged, her legs hanging out.
The family suspected Jia was sleepwalking. When Parul confronted Poonam about the events of the night before, Poonam supposedly threatened to kill herself if accused of murdering Jia.
“We went quiet,” Parul said. “We shouldn’t have.”
‘Loved children; was educated’
Neighbours in Siwah describe Poonam as distant with adults, but attentive with children.
“She barely spoke to others in the family,” Parul said. “But with kids, she was always around.” Poonam would often take the children of the village to malls when their parents left for work, she said.
“We come from a village where not many people are educated. At times, the conversations were about who looked prettier, who looked ‘gora (fair),’ who dressed well,” Parul said.
Several families recalled unsettling incidents – hot tea spilled on Vidhi, a lit matchstick thrown at Jia’s face. Each time, Poonam’s explanation was “accident”. Each time, silence followed.
“We were shocked, there was no malaal (regret) on her face. When we questioned her, she didn’t even respond properly. But because she was related, we did not speak up,” Satpal Singh said.
In Siwah, Poonam’s neighbours are somewhat relieved that their theories have come true.
Her neighbours, Billo and Sunita, sip hot tea and discuss what went wrong.
“Who knows what is going on in somebody’s mind? Even when Jia died, we all knew somebody had killed her. Now, it was confirmed it was Poonam,” Billo told Sunita.
Poonam had a Master’s degree in political science from Kurukshetra University and a Bachelor’s in Education.
“She was so well educated. She could have done so much with her life. And look what she chose to do,” Sunita said. “Shakal ki na surat ki, sutri na thi vo (she was neither good-looking nor presentable), if she considers herself only beautiful, will she kill everybody?” Billo said, bursting out into laughter.
Local media, who have dubbed Poonam a “psycho killer”, have hounded the house since the news broke.
Poonam’s mother Sunita is tired of journalists with mics and mobile phones being thrust in her face. Sunita peers from behind her door, confused.
“How do I answer these questions? She didn’t have any illness. We took her to a tantrik, but there was nothing else… She will pay for what she did to the families,” Sunita said, without eye contact.
The psych evaluation
With swirling theories about Poonam’s mental state and motive, a psychological evaluation was imminent. For over two days, psychiatrist Dr Sandeep Antil evaluated Poonam. His verdict: She showed no signs of severe mental illness or psychopathy. Poonam was a normal child, and her mother, too, did not notice anything unusual about her behaviour during childhood.
“She is not depressed and doesn’t suffer from some severe medical condition. Her personality is different,” Antil said. “But her responses were evasive. She deliberately gave incorrect answers.”
Poonam also did not reveal why she killed Vidhi, contrary to what the police and her family say: jealousy.
“Initially, it was said that she had a beauty complex, and she didn’t want anybody to look more beautiful than her, but now, she is not explaining why she killed Vidhi. Poonam’s emotional intelligence is high,” Antil said.
The psychologist has just one theory. “Some people tend to get pleasure from others’ pain.”
But psychologist Neetu Sarin has a different explanation. “In psychoanalysis, when we see a person like Poonam, who is allegedly killing a child because of these desires, she is killing parts of herself,” she said.
During questioning, Poonam showed selective memory lapses — unable to recall simple idioms, numbers or words minutes after hearing them. When the doctor asked Poonam to do simple math, she hesitated a while.
The doctor said she has regrets but something is still amiss.
“She started crying, but there were no tears. But she asked for an opportunity to correct her mistake,” Antil said.
What police say
Police say Poonam’s shifting statements complicate the case but do not weaken it. Investigators have registered three FIRs and are collecting CCTV footage, witness statements, and forensic evidence. Only Vidhi’s body was autopsied; forensic reports are awaited.
SP Panipat Bhupendra Singh said that during the first interrogation, Poonam had admitted that “she did not like beautiful girls.”
‘‘Uski kaafi ‘psycho killer” wali soch hai (She has the thinking of a psycho killer),” Singh said.
DSP Naveen Sandhu said police have recorded confessions before a magistrate and are confident the evidence will hold.
“Her killing method worked the first time,” an officer said. “No one suspected a mother. Or a relative. Until one door was locked from outside.”
Under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, a confession alone cannot secure a conviction unless supported by independent evidence. In this case, only the final death — Vidhi’s — underwent post-mortem; earlier deaths were recorded as accidents, with no forensic examination. While retraction does not automatically invalidate a confession, voluntariness and corroboration can become glaring gaps when the case goes to trial.
A family left with questions
Back in his home, Naveen watches his younger son — now two years old — play on the floor, toy trucks scattered around him.
“What she did has left my entire family broken and ruined our reputation. If she wasn’t arrested this time, she would have killed another child,” he said. His father interrupts him.
“Woh maa nahi thi,” he mutters. “Woh daayan thi.” (She wasn’t a mother. She was a witch.)
Naveen continues to look at his child and stares.
(Edited by Stela Dey)