Burari deaths: CCTV shows how family organised hangings -- from stools to wires

Delhi Police has found CCTV footage which indicates that no outsider entered the Burari house from 10 pm on July 1 till the next day when 11 members of the family were found dead by a neighbour, said a senior police officer. 

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, could be seen bringing five stools that were later used for the members to be hanged.

Neetu could be seen in the footage carrying stools accompanied by her mother. Police are now probing from where were the stools brought and what reason did the family give to the person for taking the stools.           

The family had a plywood business and it is being probed whether the family got the stools from one of its customers, said the officer.           

Around 10.15 pm, Dhruv and Shivam, the youngest members of the house, were seen taking electrical wires from the plywood shop. These wires were used by the 10 members of the family for hanging.

Around 10.40 pm, a delivery boy could be seen coming to the house for delivering 20 butter rotis ordered by the family. 

Around 11 pm, Bhavnesh, the elder son of the family matriarch could be seen taking his dog out for a walk. He later returned to the house around 11.04 pm, said the officer. 

Between 11 pm and 6 am, when a milkman arrived to leave behind milk cartons, no outsider was seen entering the house from the main entrance, he added.           

Around 7.15 am, a neighbour went upstairs and found 10 members of the family hanging and the elderly woman lying on the floor.           

On Tuesday, police recovered eight more registers from different rooms of the house which had philosophical musings about walking on a “road to God”, “overcoming fear”, and “attaining salvation”.             

Ten of the 11 members of the Bhatia 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.           

Devi’s daughter Pratibha, 57, her two sons Bhavnesh, 50, and Lalit Bhatia were also among the deceased. Bhavnesh’s wife Savita and their three children -- Meenu, Nidhi, and Dhruv, aged 15, too were found dead.           

Lalit Bhatia’s wife Tina and their 15-year-old son Shivam were also among those found dead. Pratibha’s daughter Priyanka, who was engaged last month and would have married by the end of this year, was also found hanging. 

Lalit had turned towards spiritualism after his father’s death in 2008. He would often assume his father’s alter-ego and speak in his father’s voice and dictate messages from his dead father to either Priyanka or Meenu, who would pen them in the registers.