A woman is convicted of drowning her 6-year-old niece at a wedding because “she looked prettier than her.”

For those who believe that the story of *Snow White* is just a fiction born in the twisted minds of the Grimm brothers, where an evil queen – already an adult – wants to eliminate the unfair competition of her stepdaughter for being more beautiful and younger than her, reality once again surpasses fiction, as the *Nobel Prize for Literature* Gabriel García Márquez would have said. It is enough to see what a woman in India did who drowned her 6-year-old niece because “she seemed prettier than her”. Poonam is the name of the person accused of murdering the girl during a family wedding in the city of Panipat, in the north of that country. The victim, named Vidhi, had attended the wedding with her parents, her 10-month-old brother, and her grandmother. According to the information reported by the media outlet news.com.au, Vidhi’s father reportedly received a phone call during the ceremony warning him of his little daughter’s disappearance, which triggered his desperate search. After an hour of frantic searching, the grandmother found her drowned in a bathtub in a nearby storage unit, with her head still in the water. And, despite being rushed to the nearest hospital, the minor arrived there clinically declared dead. Very quickly, the police suspected the aunt, the last person seen with the girl, so they arrested her for questioning, during which the woman confessed to the crime. According to local media, Poonam told investigators that she killed her because “she didn’t want anyone to look more beautiful” than her at the wedding.

The woman killed three more minors

Police Superintendent Bhupender Singh said that, according to investigators, the woman committed the crime when all the guests were out of the house. “After placing her in a plastic bathtub filled with water outside the depot, she drowned the girl in the bathtub, then locked the door from the outside and left,” the officer reported and added: “During the interrogation, the accused told the police that she was irritated by pretty girls.” But in addition, the woman confessed to the crime of three more minors, always for the same reason. In 2023, she drowned her sister-in-law’s daughter, 9 years old, before killing her own son to “avoid suspicion.” And last August, she killed a young woman from a nearby town “because she was prettier” than her. Until now, everyone believed that those deaths had been accidental.