Couple behead themselves with homemade guillotine in India

A husband and wife from India simultaneously decapitated themselves over the weekend using an improvised guillotine rigged in such a way that their severed heads rolled directly into a fire altar as a form of human sacrifice, officials said.

Farmer Hemubhai Makwana, 38, and his wife, Hansaben Makwana, 35, committed the sickening act sometime between Saturday and Sunday in the village of Vinchiya, located in the Rajkot district of the western state of Gujarat, local police said.

“The couple first prepared a fire altar before putting their heads under a guillotine-like mechanism held by a rope. As soon as they released the rope, an iron blade fell on them, severing their heads, which rolled into the fire,” said Vinchiya police sub-inspector Indrajitsinh Jadeja, according to Hindustan Times.

The couple’s two children, ages 12 and 13, found their headless torsos when they returned home from visiting their uncle in a nearby village, where they had been sent by their parents the day before.

According to the authorities, they found a suicide note written in Gujarati stating that the couple had taken their own lives willingly, and that no one else was to blame for their deaths, reported The Times of India.

In their parting note, the duo appealed to their family members to take care of their elderly parents and their two orphaned children.

Jadeja said investigators were taking statements from relatives and trying to determine whether the twin beadings were part of a black magic ritual.

The couple had been worshiping the god Shiva — one of the main deities of Hinduism — at an improvised temple they had set up on their property every day for the past year.

Hansaben’s cousin Jayanti Jatapara said the couple not facing any financial hardships or relationship problems before their deaths.

The case was being investigated as an accidental death and the victims’ bodies were sent to a coroner’s office to undergo autopsies.