MH Police Bharti · Bite-size lessons
Blood Relations
About 6 min · Intellectual Test (Reasoning) · English
Time worked out from the lesson's 404 words at 150 words a minute, plus a minute for each question.
Blood Relations is a core reasoning topic that tests your ability to understand family relationships based on given information. In Maharashtra Police Bharti exams, you will encounter questions where a statement describes how people are related, and you must deduce a specific relationship or identify a person.
Key ideas
- Generation Levels: Each horizontal level in a family tree represents one generation — grandparents at top, parents in middle, children at bottom. Moving up = older generation, moving down = younger generation.
- Paternal vs Maternal: Paternal relations are from father's side (father's brother = chacha/kaka). Maternal relations are from mother's side (mother's brother = mama).
- In-laws vs Blood Relations: Spouse's relatives are in-laws (sasur, saas), not blood relations. Questions may mix both — identify carefully.
- Cousin Relationships: Father's or mother's sibling's children are cousins (first cousins). They belong to the same generation as you.
- Only Child Indicator: When the question says "A is the only son/daughter of B", it means B has no other child of that gender. B may still have children of the opposite gender.
Watch out for
- Confusing "only son" with "only child" → "Only son" means no other male child; there may be daughters. Read the exact words carefully.
- Ignoring gender-neutral terms → When question says "child" or "sibling", don't assume gender. Look for other clues in the question before concluding.
- Mixing paternal and maternal → Father's sister's husband is not a blood relative (he's an in-law). Students wrongly count such people as uncles by blood.
Quick reference
- Father's/Mother's father = Grandfather; Father's/Mother's mother = Grandmother
- Brother's/Sister's son = Nephew; Brother's/Sister's daughter = Niece
- "Only son of my father" = Myself (if male) or My brother (if I am female)
- Always draw a tree: + for male, − for female, horizontal for spouse, vertical for parent-child
- Read the final question carefully: "How is X related to Y" means find X's relation with respect to Y
Check yourself: 3 questions
1. Pointing to a photograph, a man says, "The person in the photograph is the only son of my father's wife." How is the person in the photograph related to the man?
2. Ramesh introduces Suresh as the son of the brother of his father. How is Suresh related to Ramesh?
3. A is the mother of B. C is the father of B. D is the brother of C. E is the wife of D. How is B related to E?
This lesson is cut from the topic's note, not rewritten. Fact-checked on 21 Oct 2026: an AI-assisted check of this note against cited sources; the errors it found were corrected that day. Some errors may remain. The questions are from Shishya's validated question bank.
Read the full noteFlashcards for this topic
Saves this lesson and its 3 questions in this browser on this phone. No sign-in; nothing about you is saved or sent. A saved copy is not updated until you save it again. Parts that load from the server when you use them (the AI tutor, adaptive practice, sign-in) still need a connection.