The police on Thursday arrested four fishermen in connection with the killing of a 35-year-old woman, her two children and another man. The police have also not ruled out the possibility of the woman being raped. The bodies of the victims, who were first hit with an iron rod before being thrown into the Ribander creek near Panaji, were found on Wednesday.

The arrested men have been identified as Babu Singha Reddy (28), Pritesh alias Bichchoo Karmalkar (19), Vidhesh Karmalkar (21) and Suresh Keshavkar (19). “They were picked up from the Indira Nagar slums in Chimbel village near Panaji and they work as fishermen on the trawlers,” said Gajanan Prabhudesai, Deputy Superintendent of Police (Panaji).

The arrests come after the Goa Police formed two special teams to investigate 10 murders that have been reported in recent days in the state. Since Monday, police have recovered 10 bodies from north and south Goa of which six were women (see box).

“The arrests made are only in one case that was registered at the Panaji police station. We are hoping to crack the rest of the cases soon,” said Atmaram Deshpande, Superintendent of Police, Special Branch.

The police recovered four bodies from the Ribander creek near Panaji on Wednesday. The victims have been identified as Sunita Shettye (35), her son Nagesh (7), daughter Dipali (3) and Bhalchandra Salunke (65), who lived with the family. The four lived in a defunct open-air hotel on the banks of the creek. Shettye, a native of Sindhudurg district in Maharashtra, had been staying in Goa for the past three years and earned her living by doing menial jobs. During her stay in Goa, she met Salunke — a Pune native — and later started living with him in the defunct hotel, which he once guarded.

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