Five people of a family were found dead in a suspected case of murder and suicide over a love affair at the Bhagalpur police lines in Bihar on Tuesday, leading to a sensation in the town around 250km east of the state capital.

The dead bodies were found in quarter number 38 of the police lines, and the deceased included a woman constable identified as one Neetu Kumari, her husband Pankaj Kumar, two children aged five and seven, and her mother.

The throat of four of them, including Neetu, her mother and children, had been slit, while her husband was found hanging in one of the rooms. The bodies were discovered in the morning when the milkman came and nobody opened the door. He then raised an alarm and the neighbours broke open the door to their accommodation.

The entire top brass of the police in Bhagalpur rushed to the place of occurrence after getting information about the dead bodies and oversaw the investigation.

A suicide note purportedly written by Pankaj was found during the process, in which he allegedly claimed to have killed the four members of his family before proceeding to take his own life.

Neetu was a constable of the 2015 batch while her husband was unemployed. She was posted at the office of the Bhagalpur SSP Anand Kumar.

They had a love marriage, which had gone sour. Her neighbours said the husband and wife had regular fights. “Neetu had never complained about her husband. The neighbours informed that Neetu and Pankaj had been fighting for the past several days. They fought outside on the streets also, and had a fight on Monday evening,” Bhagalpur range DIG Vivekanand said.

The DIG added Pankaj in the suicide note “has accused his wife of having a relationship with someone else. We are investigating ”.