With more horrifying details coming to the fore in the Burari deaths case, the police have revealed that the Bhatia family didn’t expect to die when they hanged themselves Saturday night.
The CCTV footage, recovered by police, showed some members bringing stools and wires that were used by 11 members of the family to hang themselves.
The police have also recovered 11 diaries that were maintained over a period of 11 years. The content of the diaries matched the way the alleged suicides happened, the police said.
The last entry is the diary said “keep water in a cup. When it will change colour, you will be saved”. After the “ritual”, everyone was to untie each other.
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The family was not expecting to die and thought that “the earth will shake” and “there will be thunder in the sky”, following which they will be saved.
According to various media reports, Lalit, the younger son of Narayan Devi, used to hallucinate about his dead father advising him on salvation. It is believed that while he dictated his hallucinations, his niece, Priyanka Chundawat, took notes. He, reportedly, believed that the spirit of his father would come and save the family.
The footage of a camera installed outside a house opposite the residence of the family showed that the elder daughter-in-law of the house, Savita, along with her daughter, Neetu, brought five stools that were later used by the family to be hang themselves.
Neetu could be seen in the footage carrying stools accompanied by her mother.
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Around 10.15 pm, Dhruv and Shivam, the youngest members of the house, were seen buying electrical wires from a plywood shop. These wires were used by the 10 members of the family for the hanging.
The bodies of 10 of the 11 members of the Bhatia family were found hanging from an iron-mesh on the ceiling on Sunday, while that of 77-year-old Narayan Devi, the head of the family, was lying on the floor in another room of the house.
Devi’s daughter Pratibha (57), her two sons Bhavnesh (50) and Lalit Bhatia (45) were also among the deceased. Bhavnesh’s wife Savita (48) and their three children – Meenu (23), Nidhi (25), and Dhruv, aged 15, too were found dead.
Lalit Bhatia’s wife Tina (42) and their 15-year-old son Shivam were also among those found dead. Pratibha’s daughter Priyanka (33), who was engaged last month and would have married by the end of this year, was also found hanging.
(With agency inputs)