A post-mortem conducted on the three children who were found dead in a forest in Haryana’s Kurukshetra on Tuesday has revealed that they were shot from point-blank range, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.

Three siblings from Kurukshetra, a 8-year-old girl and two boys aged 11 and 4, were reportedly missing since Sunday morning from their native Sarsa village in Haryana. Their bodies were recovered from a forest in Morni on Tuesday morning after their uncle confessed to killing them. He had alleged that the children’s father made him kill them.

A local court has remanded the uncle to six days in police custody. The father, however, has only been questioned and was not arrested till Wednesday evening.

The autopsy report showed that the children were hit on the forehead and near the eyes.

Doctors said that “the bullet burst the back side of the skull” since the children were shot from such close range. There were no other injuries on the children and the cause of the death in all three cases was “gunshot wounds in the head”, doctors and police officials added.

Deputy Superintendent of Police in Pehowa Dheeraj Singh said, “We are investigating all the angles in the case and we are trying to find out the real motive of the murder...there is more to the story [than] we know so far.”

The children’s uncle had claimed that their father had made him kill them because he wanted to get rid of them before marrying a woman with whom he was having an extra-marital affair. However, police have now said that they suspect the role of other family members as well.

“There is a high possibility that more people could be involved. The statement of the mother and the father are not matching,” a senior official said.