Burari deaths: The mystery continues... 

Almost three days after eleven members of a family were found dead in Sant Nagar area of North Delhi’s Burari, it is still not clear whether it was a mass murder or mass suicide.

While the police’s version of mass suicide for the sake of salvation gets established by the autopsy as well as postmortem reports, the police themselves are not even completely ruling out a possibility of murder.

“From the evidences we have been getting and the chilling details in the notes we found at the crime spot, it looks like a mass suicide,” a senior police officer told National Herald on condition of anonymity. “But why would the family commit suicide with the main door unlocked. It’s something that makes us wonder and that’s why we are not completely ruling out the possibility of murder either,” the official added.

The investigation, he added, however, has so far suggested suicide. “The diary we found at their house has all the details of how they will follow a ‘ritual’. Actually, most of them must have been aware that they were going to die,” he said.

According to the the entries in the diary, they were expecting someone would come and untie their hands and help Lalit, Narayani Devi’s youngest son, to bring down the hanging people. According to the police, Lalit has been dreaming of his father who had died a decade ago and he had been noting down the conversations with his father.

An Inspector in Delhi Police told National Herald requesting anonymity, “the notes have details such as how to lead better life, information on growing business, etc.” “And he had a lot of influence on his family,” the Inspector claimed. “The case has been handed over to the crime branch and we are expecting the crime branch to close the case in the next 24-hours,” he said.

When neighbours and the shopkeepers in the neighbourhood were asked whether Lalit, indeed, had so much influence on his family, they replied in the affirmative. However, none of them were willing to believe that “such a nice family would commit suicide”. It has to be murder, the group of at least seven people said almost in unison.

The tale of 11s

Late on Monday evening, the Burari death case took a different turn when various media houses reported that there were 11 bodies found in the house and the house has eleven ventilation pipes (see picture). The reports went on to explain that seven pipes face downwards, as if symbolising the number of dead women and four are straight facing. One pipe, the reports further speculated, is located farther away from the rest 10, as if solving the mystery of why 77-year-old Narayani Devi was found dead apart from the rest 10, who had allegedly hanged themselves.

The bereaved family, however, clarified that the pipes had nothing to do with any superstition or “black magic”. “The pipes were for ventilation and for the purpose of solar project,” said Sujata, Narayani Devi’s daughter to ANI.

However, while the CCTV footages show no one entering or exiting the house between 11pm on Saturday June 30 and 5 am on Sunday July 1. The autopsy reports also confirm that there were indeed no resistance by any of the members and all the ‘process’ was peaceful and in connivance.

“This episode will be taught to our children in the history books”

Sudhir Kumar Mishra lives less than 500 metres away from where the Bhatias stayed and allegedly committed suicide. “Calling it a mass suicide defies logic,” he says.

“I’ve a family of 10, most of us have different beliefs and different way of thinking. I can bet that even if I command my son to commit suicide, he will reject it within seconds. How can 11 of them follow one man blindly and all of them commit suicide without challenging,” asks Mishra. “How can all eleven loose their senses at once?”

And even if there is a tantric involved, Mishra continues, “I know no tantric who advises people to die. They (the tantrics) are there to make money, what will they achieve by advising people, who he could have extracted more money from, to die.”

But then, he says, as if talking to himself, “The way scenario on the spot matches with the details in the diary confuses me. And the way all the reports have been vindicating what is written in the notes can not be denied either.”

“It is so unusual and so confusing that this mystery will go down in the history books. Our kids will read it as part of their syllabus,” Mishra concludes.