The Mysterious Burari Deaths

Who were the Chundawats?

The Chundawat family lived in the city of Delhi in India. Like many traditional Indian families, there were multiple generations living under one roof. The Chundawats had three generations living in their home and were described by neighbors as a hard-working family, who never caused trouble and were always willing to help out those in need. The family was originally from Rajasthan, a state in northern India. They moved to the city of Tohana, living there for about 10 years, before ultimately settling in Delhi in 1990. The patriarch of the family, Bhopal Singh, wasn’t a rich man, but was financially secure. He sold his land and the cattle that he’d raised and bought a home in Burari, a neighborhood in Delhi. Bhopal moved there with his wife and youngest son. 

Eventually, most of the Chundawat family followed Bhopal, who was affectionately referred to as “Daddy” by those close to him, and relocated to Burari. Those who knew the family, neighbors in particular, said that Bhopal and his wife, Narayani Devi, were caring and often helped take care of young children that lived nearby. Bhopal never yelled or argued. His eldest son said that he could communicate enough with his eyes that he didn’t have to be loud. Rita, a neighbor, said that Bhopal and Narayani considered her a daughter. She lived just across the street from them. They would stay with Rita’s new baby and help with feedings, changings, and putting him to sleep. Narayani always had food prepared and shared it with Rita and other neighbors. The two were very kind, and when their house was being constructed, they would watch the workers and give them water and tea.

The eldest Chundawat son, Dinesh, said that his father used to drink alcohol and eat non-vegetarian food, and that he cooked especially good mutton dishes. Dinesh recalled that his father would always leave a bottle of whiskey in his bedroom for him and his brother to drink when he visited. As most of the Chundawat family had moved to Delhi, Dinesh remained in Rajasthan because he had an accident in 1992 and was unable to do much for about a year. His business as a building contractor was also doing well, so he didn’t follow his father to Burari. In the mid 1990’s, Bhopal and Narayani’s daughter, Pratibha came to live with them, along with her own daughter. Pratibha’s husband, who was reportedly an alcoholic, had died and his family was not treating her well. The Chundawat family believed that both Pratibha and her daughter, Priyanka, would be much happier at their home. 

Two of Bhopal and Narayani’s sons owned stores in the neighborhood. Bhavnesh owned a grocery store and Lilat ran a plywood shop that was just underneath the house. Both shops were doing well and had many regular customers. 

Unfortunately, in February of 2007, the Chundawat family suffered a devastating loss. The family’s patriarch, Bhopal, died of a respiratory illness. The family mourned him and called for a priest to perform prayers for 10 days following the death. With Bhopal now dead, there was a total of 11 family members living in the home: Narayani, 75, who was now the head of the family, her and Bhopal’s three children, 50-year-old Bhavnesh and his 48-year-old wife Savita, who had three children; Neetu, 25, Maneka, 23, and Dhruv, 15. There was also the youngest adult son, Lalit, 45, his wife, Teena, 42, their 15-year-old son Shivam, and 57-year-old widowed Pratibha and her daughter, 33-year-old Priyanka. While the family was clearly in pain following the death of Bhopal, those around them said that the family was doing well under the circumstances. They continued to operate their businesses and neighbors were glad to see that the children were doing well in school and the others were doing well in their jobs and schooling. Another neighbor said that the children used to call her for nightly kirtans after Bhopal’s death. They’d sit together and pray for up to 30 minutes. The youngest family members would say that it was time for grandfather to come. 

Lalit, despite being the youngest of Bhopal’s sons, had assumed the role of the head of the house. He was called Kaka, which meant uncle, by the youngest family members. He was described as “funny, reserved, responsible, authoritative, all at once.” Lalit’s best friend, Chander Prakash Mehta said that he was a hard worker. Lalit went to medical school, but was unable to take his final exams due to illness and had to drop out. Chander said, “Lalit joked a lot. He was probably the funniest in our group. But he was a no-nonsense man and he never compromised on principles.” To everyone who knew the Chundawat family, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Bhopal’s death derailed the family like any loved one’s death would, but they were making it through. They were harmonious, educated, intelligent, and hard-working. Nobody could’ve predicted what would happen next.

The Discovery

On July 1st, 2018, Gurcharan Singh went out for his regular morning walk. Lalit normally joined him for these morning walks but didn’t today, which was odd, but even more strange was that Lalit’s shop was still not open. He normally opened before 6AM, but now, 7:30AM, the shop still wasn’t open. The milk had been dropped off for their grocery store, but nobody had brought it inside yet. Concerned, Gurcharan climbed the stairs of his friend’s home and found the front door open. He walked inside and was greeted by a horrific scene. Ten of the eleven members of the Chundawat family were hanging from an iron grate in the ceiling, each of them with a scarf tied around their neck. They were all dead. In one of the bedrooms, Narayani, the eldest family member was lying on the floor beside a bed, also dead.

Gurcharan quickly left and got his wife, unsure if what he was seeing was actually real or he’d imagined it. When they went back into the house, his wife screamed, loud enough that their adult son ran over. He grabbed his cell phone and called the police. Around 7:35AM, a police officer was called to respond to the scene. He’d been a neighbor of the Chundawats in the past, so he was asked to check out the reports of multiple deaths. As he entered the stairwell that led into the home, there were multiple people rushing out, crying and screaming. As soon as the officer walked into the home, he saw nine people hanging from the iron grid on the ceiling and one hanging across the room. He then found the grandmother laying in the bedroom. The family’s dog was tied up on the roof to the same great that the family hung from. He was barking loudly. The officer called the head constable to inform them that they did indeed have eleven bodies. The constable instructed him to seal off the crime scene and that he was on his way.

It appeared as though all of the bodies had been blindfolded with their hands bound. Some of them also had their legs bound. There were various stools on the ground around them. Each person hung from a colorful scarf that was tied tightly around the iron grate on the ceiling. The officers were stunned. They didn’t think that anyone had ever seen a crime scene like this. An entire family, three generations of “high-functioning social members” were all dead. Police couldn’t understand, if it was a mass suicide, why was everyone blindfolded? Why were they bound and why did they have cotton balls in their ears? Nothing about the scene made sense to anyone.

The Investigation

As more officers and investigators arrived on scene, the crowd of onlookers grew. The street outside of the Chundawat home was filled with people, as well as the surrounding streets. (And when I say filled, I mean it was fucking PACKED.) The entire police force was either inside of the home or outside, putting up barricades and attempting to block people from getting too close to the crime scene. The crowds were on roofs, leaning out of windows and off terraces and porches, all filming with their cell phones. Every news outlet in the surrounding proximity had flooded the area.

With all of the people who’d been on scene before the police, rumors began to spread. Had the entire family been murdered? Was it a mass suicide? Was the entire family dead? The press was only able to report that there was said to be a family of eleven dead inside the home. That was, until they received the video. A civilian, who’d been inside the home before police arrived, made a video of the bodies hanging. Just under two minutes long, the video showed the ten family members that were hanging from the ceiling, most of them completely blindfolded and bound. There were seven women (including the grandmother found in the bedroom) and four men. Once the video was out and being shared to the public, things changed. The public was uncomfortable and upset, nobody could understand how an entire family could possibly do this to themselves. They believed that there had to be an intruder involved. While law enforcement did what they could to prevent riots and to disperse the crowd outside of the scene, there was still a massive amount of people in the streets. The joint commissioner of police made a public announcement that they weren’t ruling anything out just yet, that they were investigating from every angle. 

By 9:30AM, all of the crime scene experts had arrived on scene and were just as stunned as the first officers on scene. The entire situation was incredibly odd and nobody seemed to have any answers. Investigators began scouring the home from the bottom up and taking pictures of everything. With the bodies still in place, investigators marked each body with a piece of notebook paper with a number written on it. Some of the people appeared as though they might’ve been able to stand up if they’d tried. The grandmother of the family who was laying in the bedroom had a scarf and a belt around her neck. Her body was turned on its side and she had marks on the side of her neck that matched the belt. On the dresser beside her, it appeared as though she may have been tied to the handle. Police felt that it was even stranger that an elderly woman would willingly die by suicide. 

Investigators noticed that there was a surveillance camera across the street from the Chundawats’ home. Several officers were tasked with reviewing the footage. A local animal activist arrived on scene to rescue the only witness to the deaths, the family’s dog. The dog was initially very aggressive, but likely because he was frightened. They carted him away in A LITERAL ANIMAL AMBULANCE. IT SAID IT ON THE VAN. 

Relatives arrived on scene and had to be escorted through the huge crowds of people and press trying to shove microphones and cameras in their faces. Teena’s brother (Teena was one of the deceased) said that he spoke to her over the phone the night of the incident. She’d called him and he said that the phone call was normal. He also spoke to her husband, Lalit, for about 15 minutes. Lalit told him that everything was great and that they’d speak again in the morning. Teena and Lalit were described by their family members and friends as a perfect couple. Friends said that the two trusted one another fully and had a great rapport and always supported each other.

Sujata Nagpal, who was the fifth child of Bhopal and Narayani and one of the two surviving children, was extremely upset that the media and police seemed to be portraying the deaths as a mass suicide. She, along with most of the rest of the remaining family, were adamant that their family members had been victims of murder. She publicly said that she believed the police were hiding something to protect themselves. More people joined the swarms already in Burari outside of the Chundawats’ home to say that the police were lying and washing their hands of the situation. 

Investigators still on scene were observing many different things that seemed to indicate that this had perhaps been an intentional act. There was no indication of a struggle and the ligatures tied to the iron grate appeared to be equidistant apart. It seemed as though that would be very difficult for a perpetrator to stage. It looked as though Bavnesh had attempted to untie himself, as one hand was near his throat and grabbing one of the ligatures. The youngest family members were completely bound; their hands were tied tightly behind them with telephone wire, there was tape over their mouth and eyes, and cotton balls in their ears. The youngest boy’s mouth was gagged with a handkerchief. Despite the rumors of a mass suicide, there were a lot of officers who’d been on scene who said that they thought it was a murder because of the bindings and the blindfolds.

Finally, investigators were ready to remove the bodies from the home to be transported for autopsies. Eleven ambulances were brought to the scene, which was no easy task as the streets were still completely packed with people. Each body was placed in a body bag with the ligatures still intact before being transported to the medical examiner’s office. 

Daddy’s Back…

The officers who’d been tasked with reviewing the surveillance footage from the camera across the street went through each frame multiple times. The camera covered the entire exterior of the Chundawat’s home. On June 28th, three days before the death, there was footage of Teena and her son, Shivam carrying four stools to the house. Two days later, on June 30th, Teena and Neetu were seen carrying several plastic stools that had been purchased at a nearby market. On that same night, at 10:29PM, Shivam is seen opening up the door to the family’s plywood shop. He goes inside, grabs a bundle of wires, then takes them upstairs. A neighbor kid later said that he asked Shivam if he wanted to play when he saw him with the wires, but that Shivam told him, “not tonight”. There was no evidence that anyone other than the family had entered the home. Now that police felt confident that there wasn’t an intruder involved, they began to wonder if someone within the family did this?

Only two weeks prior to the deaths, the family had thrown an engagement party for Priyanka. Everyone in attendance spoke of how much fun the party was and how the family seemed excited. Nothing indicated that there were any troubles within the family.

With the bodies being examined by the medical examiner, investigators continued to pick apart everything in the house, looking for any clues as to what may have happened. They found what appeared to be the remains of a ritual that was done on the night of the deaths. Investigators looked for any sort of suicide note, but couldn’t find one. What they did find near the altar was a diary. They searched every other room in the house, multiple times, looking for more diaries. They ended up finding a total of 11 diaries, the earliest dating back to 2007, after Bhopal’s death. The most recent entry was just before the deaths. 

Everything that they’d found at the death scene was written in the diaries. It seemed as though there was an entry in the diaries almost every day. The family would wake up and refer to the diary to find out what they were going to do that day. The diaries gave them instructions and told them what they’d have to do to repent for their mistakes. Entries said things like, so and so is spending too much time on the phone, they should do this to be forgiven. There were also instructions to follow Lalit’s guidance and instructions. It seemed to indicate that if the family experienced good fortune, such as expanding their businesses and finding a husband for Priyanka, these were the results of following what the diary had instructed. Some of the entries even hinted at possible witchcraft or occult practices. It seemed as though there was an entity apart from the people who were giving them instructions. 

As investigators read through the diaries, they believed that the “instructions” written were supposed to have been coming from Bhopal after his death. Once Bhopal died, Lalit’s bond with him seemed to strengthen. As he took on the role of the family’s patriarch, his family saw him as mature and strong. They listened to his instructions and his words were seen as final. Many of the entries in the diaries referred specifically to Lalit. For example, all of you are making Lalit anxious, follow Lalit’s instructions. Since just after Bhopal’s death, Lalit had written that his father had been visiting him in his dreams. They would converse and he would share the conversations and instructions with the rest of the family. One of the women in the family had even told a neighbor that her uncle Lalit had been possessed by her grandfather’s spirit. His voice would change when he was “possessed” and he sounded like his father. Whatever was written in the diaries was assumed to be instructions from Bhopal. 

It was initially believed that Lalit had written all of the diary entries, however a handwriting expert found that Priyanka and Neetu had also written in the diaries at certain points, taking notes of what Lalit said. Other than occasional mentions of Bhopal’s spirit still being with them, the family didn’t speak to anyone else about what they were experiencing. The control that was being held over the Chundawat family by Lalit became more and more apparent to investigators as they read the diaries. Combined with stories they were hearing from those close to the family, things began to come together and make sense.

When Lalit was in college, he had a severe bike accident, in which he suffered a head injury. He was unable to complete his final exams in school and was hospitalized for quite some time. His friend recalled that after the accident, Lalit would fall asleep often, and even in the middle of a conversation. In March of 2004, Lalit suffered from another severe injury. He was working for a man at a plywood business, when they got into an argument about his pay. After the dispute, Lalit was physically assaulted, and when he lost consciousness, he was locked inside of a building and the plywood inside was set on fire. Luckily, Lalit regained consciousness and was able to use his cell phone to call for help. After the assault, Lalit became unable to speak. His family said that it was from smoke inhalation, however doctors said that there was no medical reason for this. Lalit didn’t speak for 3.5 years. He didn’t speak when his son was born or when his father died. It was believed that Lalit was suffering from PTSD. It was recommended that he see a psychiatrist, but he never did. There was a stigma that went along with admitting that you may have had a mental health problem and Lalit and his family didn’t want that. The entire family was shaken up by Lalit’s loss of voice. He was the family’s primary earner and lost his job. During the 10 days of prayers after Bhopal’s death, one of the family’s close friends said that during a prayer, Lalit began chanting suddenly. As his voice came back, the family began saying, “Daddy has returned.” Lalit told everyone that he had regained his voice due to “daddy’s blessings”. Now, reflecting on the deaths, friends wonder if this was the beginning of the end. 

Friends noticed that Lalit’s behavior had changed over the few weeks prior to the deaths. At Priyanka’s engagement party, just two weeks before, friends recalled that Lalit was extremely withdrawn and even ignored when people spoke directly to him. He began sleeping all day and all night. After the deaths, people began to speculate that Priyanka’s engagement and upcoming marriage is what finally pushed Lalit to a breaking point. He may have known that it wouldn’t be long before Priyanka left the family, and that the code of silence he held with his family might be broken. His psychosis had reached a level that there was no way of returning from.

Mass Suicide

The medical examiner had determined the cause of death for all of the Chundawats. All of them, except for the grandmother, were determined to have died from hanging. The grandmother was determined to have died from a “partial hanging”. The instructions found in the diaries directed the family that they would need to participate in a Banyan Tree Ritual, which would run for seven days along with the Badh Puja, a worship ritual. The Banyan tree is a tree with long hanging branches. The ritual was so that the family would hang themselves like the branches of the Banyan tree. The last diary entry specified the exact instructions for the ritual. The time was instructed to be at 1AM, which was also what the medical examiner found. The directions included:

• Nobody outside was to know anything about the ritual.
• Only dim light should be used during and eyes should be closed.
• Blindfolds should be tied across the eyes, mouths gagged by handkerchiefs, and the mind was to be focused and empty (this is believed to be why some had cotton balls in their ears).
• Because the grandmother was older and overweight, she wouldn’t be able to complete the ritual as the others, so she would complete her hanging by lying down.
• During the ritual, the family members should imagine the branches of the Banyan tree wrapping around them.
• The ritual is to be performed with unity and determination.

Going along with what the investigators suspected as Lalit being the driving force being the deaths, it appeared that he and his wife Teena were the last to hang themselves. The bindings around their hands were tied differently from everyone else’s and their legs were not bound, giving the indication that Lalit and Teena may have helped everyone else before hanging themselves. With this, investigators wondered if each person made the choice to die, or if some of them were forced, technically making it a murder?

It was written in the diary that grandfather Bhopal would attend the ceremony. It read “Keep a bowl of water outside the room. When the color of the water changes, I shall appear…after the ritual, the members should help untie each other.” It seemed as though the family fully expected Bhopal to rescue them, that the ritual was intended to show their obedience and respect to their family’s patriarch, not to end their lives. 

Though investigators and the remaining Chundawat family had SOME answers and assumptions were made,, there were still many things left unanswered. Was Lalit suffering from a mental illness, possibly PTSD from injuries as a child and his father’s death? The joint police commissioner ultimately announced that there were no signs of foul play. The Chundawat family was finally able to be laid to rest. The eleven family members were dressed together and many friends and family attended the funeral. In a traditional Hindu funeral ceremony, there would be a priest for each person, however there weren’t enough to do so. The family picked one priest to perform the ceremony for the whole family. Some of the remaining family members asked to see the faces of their loved ones to say goodbye. Dinesh, the remaining son of Bhopal, had to go through and perform the last rites for each of the family members, lighting the fires. The bones and ashes that remained were then placed in the Ganges River. Very often in death in India, remaining family members will donate their loved ones’ eyes. Dinesh did this in hopes that it would keep his family alive through others. The Chundawat family deaths were ultimately ruled neither a suicide or a murder, but a tragic accident. From the investigation, it didn’t seem as though any of them intended on truly dying.