Delhi police to conduct psychological autopsy to clear Burari death mystery

Psychological autopsy attempts to explain why someone has taken his life by analyzing medical records and interviewing friends and family. 

New Delhi: Delhi Police will conduct a psychological autopsy of 11 members of a family in Burari who were found dead under mysterious circumstances on July 1, said a senior police officer on Friday. 

The doctor who will be doing it is yet to be decided, he said.

A psychological autopsy attempts to explain why a person has taken his life by analyzing medical records, interviewing friends and family and conducting research into his state of mind prior to death, say experts. 

By going through the notes recovered from the spot that spoke about replicating 'badh tapasya', in which people get into a banyan tree-formation whose branches hang around, the expert will try and gain an insight into the psyche of the deceased, said the officer. 

The notes say that doing this would make God happy. Police are still awaiting the final postmortem report and the forensic report. 

They will also be sending the viscera of the bodies for forensic examination to ascertain whether the members were poisoned. The registers recovered from the spot will be sent for handwriting analysis, even though police are sure that one of the writers was 33-year-old Priyanka. 

The initial autopsy report had said that all 11 members had died of hanging and there were no signs of struggle or scuffle. Ten of the 11 members of the deceased family were found hanging from an iron-mesh in the ceiling on Sunday, while the body of 77-year-old Narayan Devi, the head of the family, was lying on the floor in another room of the house. 

Her daughter Pratibha (57) and her two sons Bhavnesh (50) and Lalit (45) were among the deceased. Bhavnesh's wife Savita (48) and their three children - Maneka (23), Neetu (25), and Dhirendra (15) were also found dead. 

The others who were found hanging were Lalit's wife Tina (42), their 15-year-old son Dushyant and Pratibha's daughter Priyanka, who was engaged last month and was supposed to get married by year-end. 

On Wednesday, police had recovered CCTV footage that showed some members bringing stools and wires that were used for their hanging. They had also found 11 diaries which had "psychological musings" and things about attaining "road to God".