A 37-year-old woman allegedly strangled and stabbed her two minor step-children to death in Madhya Pradesh's Datia district, the police said on Thursday.
The police have arrested the accused Jyoti Prajapati, who allegedly went shopping after killing her stepson Arnab (7) and stepdaughter Janhvi (11) at their home in City Kotwali area on Wednesday evening, an official said.
The accused strangled the children in separate rooms and then stabbed them with a knife multiple times, leaving them in a pool of blood, Datia senior police official Kamal Maurya said.
Prajapati then went shopping at a local market, he said.
The incident came to light when the accused's husband Arvind, who is a labourer, returned home and found his children dead, the official said.
The police interrogated the accused after she returned home from the market, following which she was arrested, he said.
While the police are yet to ascertain the motive behind the killings, initial probe suggests that the woman disliked her stepchildren and did not get along well with them, the official added.