Family of 11 found dead at home, handwritten notes of salvation found by police

NEW DELHI: The post-mortem report of six of the 11 members of a family who were found dead at their residence in Delhi said that the cause of their death was ligature hanging. The post-mortem report further said that no signs of struggle were detected. The family members had also donated their eyes.

“First thing we did was to donate their eyes that could provide eyesight to 22 people, considering the family was religious and always wanted to help others. We gave approval letter yesterday,” Navneet Batra, a friend of the family, told a source.

On Sunday morning, the bodies of 11 members of a family were recovered from their house which is located in Sant Nagar area of north Delhi Burari. The bodies were discovered when a neighbour grew suspicious after he noticed the grocery shop run by the family being closed for a while.

10 people, including two men, six women and two teenagers, were found hanging from a ceiling on the first floor of the two-storey house on Sunday. They were all blindfolded and gagged and some of them had their hands and feet tied as well. An old woman was found dead in the adjacent room of the house.

The deceased were identified as Narayan Devi (77), her daughter Pratibha (57) and two sons--Bhavnesh (50) and Lalit Bhatia (45). Bhavnesh wife Savita (48) and their three children--Meenu (23), Neetu (25) and Dhruv (15) and Lalit's wife Tina (42) along with their 15-year-old son Shivam was also among the dead.

Pratibha's daughter, Priyanka (33), who had got engaged last month and was supposed to get married by the end of this year, was also found hanging.

 The police have yet to decide if it was a case of mass suicide or some members were murdered while the others committed suicide.

The police recovered handwritten notes from the house which have indicated towards observance of some definite spiritual or mystical practices followed  by the whole family. According to the police, two registers were found with handwritten notes on how to attain salvation.