Death is predestined.
How and when, no one knows.
Would it be a fall from the mountain?
Would it be in your sleep, or death from drowning?
Be it in any form, death is certain for all.
It's God's will.
Even I don't know how I will meet my death.
You see, eventually, everything fades away.
I moved here in 1997 after my retirement from the railways.
Back then, the population was sparse.
Now the place is overpopulated.
I met the family when I moved here.
In 1997, we constructed our houses together.
As neighbours, we got along very well.
What remains are the ruins.
Usually, their shop would open between 5:00-5:30 a.m.
That's when the milkman delivered the milk.
That day, their shop did not open.
Around 7:00 a.m., I went to my balcony
and saw someone inquiring about buying milk.
So I wondered why they were late in opening the shop.
None of them picked up the phone, it kept ringing.
This was rather unusual.
So I went downstairs to check.
I knocked on the door only to realize that it was not locked from the inside.
I pushed the door and it opened.
At that moment, I panicked.
I climbed up the stairs…
My mother is old and is a light sleeper.
She had stepped out for a morning walk.
She came back from the street screaming.
I was still sleepy after working all night.
In that state, I rushed to their house.
I stood there for two minutes wondering whether it was real.
I asked my son to quickly get my phone and called the police control room.
At around 7:35 a.m., I got a call from the Burari station informing me
that a suicide had taken place in my beat.
You see, I grew up in the same area, Sant Nagar.
Before becoming a police officer, I was their neighbour first.
My seniors asked me to go and check the scene.
Just as I entered the lane,
I saw men and women
running down the stairs, crying hysterically.
I reached upstairs and saw…
nine people hanging from an iron grill on the ceiling.
A tenth lady was hanging right opposite.
I found their mother in the other room lying on the floor near the bed.
I could hear their dog, tied on the roof, barking continuously.
The formation in which they were hanging reminded me of a banyan tree,
like branches of the tree suspended downwards.
They too were suspended, in the same manner, by colorful scarves.
POLICE STATION, BURARI
Hello. Yes?
I am at the station.
There is a documentary being made on my case. I'm busy with the shoot.
All right.
This is something that's etched in my mind,
and till I die, it is going to remain there.
Early morning I was in the police station.
I was out patrolling till 5:00 a.m. that morning.
I had told the duty officer that I was tired and needed some rest.
He woke me up in a panic, "Sir, this is very important."
I woke up.
Rajeev was on the phone and he was beside himself.
"They're all hanging," he said.
I asked, "How many?" He said, "I couldn't count."
How can one count "one, two, three, four, five, six…" in that state of mind?
He said, "They're hanging in a line."
I asked him to seal the place. "Don't allow anybody.."
"You stay there, I am coming."
Everybody should rush to the spot.
I was still putting on my belt as I jumped into my car.
I still remember entering the scene of the crime.
Everybody is hanging.
Blindfolded. Hands bound.
From 12 to 13-year-olds to 60 to 80-year-olds.
I don't think I have ever seen such a scene, even in a movie.
I don't think anybody has seen this kind of crime scene ever in his life.
What's important is there was a family,
not an atypical family, mind you,
quite a typical family.
There were three generations living under one roof.
The grandparents, the parents, and the children.
And in a joint family, you see, everyone's roles are kind of plotted,
and everybody falls in line.
All of them educated.
All of them high-functioning social members.
People in the prime of their lives.
This was truly extraordinary.
The first question that comes to a person's mind would be why?
Why did this incident happen? Everybody wants to know why.
And the answer is not simple, it's quite complex.
We certainly don't know what's happening with our neighbours.
And we absolutely do not know what's happening in our neighbourhood.
But every now and then something comes along
that shakes the most hardened of us.
You know, it makes you go, "Oh, my God!"
If anyone wanted to commit this kind of mass-killing,
killing 11 people, would require at least…
If we think that two people were controlling one victim,
still we require 20, 30 people over here
The crime scene doesn't indicate any disturbance of that sort.
Their ornaments were still on them. So there is no indication of burglary.
And if indeed it was suicide, why are they blindfolded and tied up?
Exactly, what is it?
Could someone have poisoned them and then hung them?
Once murdered, then they could've been hung to make it look like a suicide.
It was morning time.
Fifty to sixty people had already gathered to buy milk.
-Their regular customers. -Their regular customers.
They spread the news, and it flared up in no time.
The Chief Minister of Delhi, Shri Arvind Kejriwal is here
to visit the crime scene and take stock of the situation.
What caused these 11 deaths? Is this murder or suicide?
Securing the crime scene became our top priority.
Our entire staff was on the road controlling the crowds.
We placed barricades.
As we secured the lanes, people took to the roofs.
They were trying to get a view from the rooftop.
There was a lot of curiosity around what had happened.
People were crowding windows and terraces, hoping to get a view.
Just then, I got a call from my source.
He informed me that,
"11 people have been found dead inside a house."
"They've been murdered!"
Finding 11 bodies together in a city like Delhi was a big deal.
Why has this happened? How? Who did it? And why?
There is a saying that crime reporters are devoid of emotions,
just like police officers
who deal with dead bodies and accidents every day.
They become emotionally dead.
I guess it is partly true for us.
But on that day, I was disturbed hearing
that a whole family was found dead.
Because I have never come across such a case
ever since I started covering crime.
So, my first instinct was that this could be fake news.
I was desperately trying to get more information on the case,
but no one was answering my calls because it was such a big case.
Meanwhile, I spoke to my local police source.
They confirmed the story to be true.
I was the first one to break the news in the Burari case.
I was the first one to present this case to the world.
My tweet got rapidly retweeted. Soon the news spread like wildfire.
Everybody rushed to Burari to cover the story.
11 bodies were found hanging from a mesh in a residence in Burari.
Seven women and four men…
By 8:30 a.m., every media channel was at the scene.
Delhi Police has never dealt with a case like this before,
where 11 dead people are found in the same house.
It's definitely a race.
There's too much pressure to be the first to break the news.
We were stuck in the crowd since the police had blocked the access.
Based on the hearsay, we were trying to put the pieces together.
Behind me, you can see the senior police officials
who are still here at the spot.
Right now, we are at the top and let me show you the top angle view.
Just then, we got a video
and it was a video of the crime scene shot in the morning.
The police reached the scene by 7:35, 7:40 a.m.
The video was already shot and uploaded by then.
Someone from the crowd had shot it and it had gone viral.
I received this video on one of my WhatsApp groups.
It was spine-chilling.
It was such a horrifying video.
This entire video was almost two minutes long.
No police is visible in that at all.
Someone from the crowd shot it and made it viral.
Instructions were given that nobody should
air it on their channel
because it's brutal and disturbing.
After watching that video we were all shaken up.
We couldn't believe this could happen. It was so disturbing.
After watching that video we needed no further confirmation.
The video verified the news for us.
In a horrifying incident,
dead bodies of 11 members of the same family,
seven women and four men,
were found in a house in north Delhi's Burari area…
11 members of a family were found dead…
Big news now coming in from Burari, Delhi…
11 bodies found…
…the phone call came in to the Delhi police control room…
11 people dead…
It's an exclusive…
When this video and the visuals got out,
the gravity of the news spiralled.
On watching the video, it looked like they had been murdered.
How could 11 people do this to themselves?
The public could not believe it and people kept pouring in.
We must act responsibly in such cases.
While reporting, you have to be very sure.
Even a small error could cascade into a massive law and order situation.
In these situations, people tend to get agitated
and soon it turns destructive.
One person starts some bullshit and it soon gets out of hand.
We need to calm the crowd, make sure there are no riots.
Anti-social elements are on the lookout for exposure.
In a short while, the police will make a statement.
Senior officers reached the crime scene within an hour.
We are not ruling out any possibility for now.
We are investigating from all possible angles. Thank you.
At this point in time, what is happening is that evidence is being gathered
and the forensic team has also arrived here
in order to gather the evidence.
By 9:30, FSL were there. The whole team was there.
Biology, Physics, Chemistry.
FSL Photography. Everybody, we wanted there.
All of the experts.
Each of them had the same reaction, "What is this?"
As we went from the ground floor to the first floor,
we saw the bodies.
The first reaction was, "Oh, my God!"
We could not believe it.
It was very surprising and very cruel.
Because there were elders and children there.
It was difficult to make sense of it.
Three generations of a family, hanging.
Our photography team started to document
each and everything.
We did not want to miss a single detail.
We marked the bodies.
One, two, three, four, in serial number.
Marking the bodies was a really difficult task.
The hanging bodies would move as we worked.
We had to negotiate our way to mark the bodies.
This didn't feel like a typical crime scene.
Something was off.
The nine people hanging together looked like suicide, but still,
why the double knots? Why the blindfolds?
It's a mystery.
Along with the sarees, the wires were also used as nooses.
Some had their hands tied, some didn't.
The woman who was hanging at a distance,
her legs were touching the ground.
The mother, 80 years old, dead in another room.
Why is she in that position?
Again, the same queries. Is it suicide, or is it murder?
The motive was yet to be known. Why and how did this happen?
Suicide note is not there.
Because of all these things, we could not leave out anything.
And we can't just rule it as suicide.
We needed every kind of clue, whatever we could get.
We noticed a CCTV camera just across the lane.
Immediately a team was deputed to check the footage
right from the beginning.
From the previous evening
right up until 7:00-8:00 a.m. the next morning,
scan through every moment, don't skip anything.
To rule out the possibility of an outsider's entry.
To ensure that there was no outsider involved.
Was it a case of mass murder or mass suicide?
This is a question that has grappled
not just the people from these by-lanes of Burari
but perhaps the entire nation.
This is their house.
Right next door to us. We often talked to them from here.
We live right next door. We were close to them.
They were very harmonious people.
They were a close-knit family of 11 members.
They were great neighbours.
I have a son who often visited their shop downstairs,
they were all extremely fond of him.
He often called out to them from the terrace.
My son misses them a lot.
As neighbours, we were very fond of each other.
Actually, they had come from Tohana.
They used to do farming there.
Earlier, they had one shop and then later opened another one.
They opened a general store.
The younger one, Lalit, had a plywood business.
They were doing well.
I worked for eight years at the plywood store with Lalit.
I never saw the family have even the smallest argument ever.
At home and outside, no one even raised their voice ever.
They were religious people who prayed at the temple twice a day.
They were generous.
If I ever forgot to bring lunch, they would feed me.
They treated me like family.
When we moved here, we became a family.
We were together in sorrow and joy.
We used to attend social functions together.
Our own families got left behind in villages.
In the city, our neighbours become our family.
My elder son was a bit older than their sons.
They formed a deep friendship.
They would play outside till 11:00 at night.
They hung out together.
They always greeted me with respect. Always touched my feet.
I always wished that my children were like them.
All three kids that studied with us were intelligent.
I personally coached Neetu.
She was bold and always spoke her mind.
She was intelligent, good with her studies.
They were brave girls and intelligent ones.
Strong personalities. Without fear.
Ever since I knew them, they were called the Bhatia family.
Narayani Devi… Her maiden name was Bhatia.
Narayani Aunty was friendly and warm to all.
If you visited their house, she'd host you with love and care.
The daughters-in-law, Savita, Tina, both of them were very sweet.
Not just these two, the whole family would go to any length to help.
They were there for us all the time.
We would even leave our children in their care when we left town.
I was at the Chandni Chowk Gurudwara, when she called me.
She said, "Come fast."
"There has been a tragedy in Bhupi's house."
My initial feeling was that
it must be a burglary since Priyanka was about to get married.
How could three generations kill themselves together?
And to murder 11 people is inconceivable.
Since the whole family had perished,
all 11 of them,
and there were no eyewitnesses,
nobody to tell us what had happened.
Their dog was the sole surviving member of that family.
I saw this breaking news on TV.
A family of 11 was found dead due to hanging.
It struck me that there was a dog constantly being shown
and no one seemed to care.
They were talking about everything but the dog.
All the news channels, they were all showing the dog.
It struck me that I have to rescue that baby.
He's obviously in a lot of pain and trauma and troubled by the blazing sun.
He was tied to the same grill where the family was found hanging.
He had obviously been a silent witness to the whole act, unable to stop them.
Because he's voiceless.
When we reached, the police escorted us upstairs.
Tommy was very aggressive.
We couldn't control him at all.
So then we had to bring a dog catcher.
Tommy was the twelfth member of that family.
If Tommy wasn't tied upstairs,
perhaps the family could've been alive now.
Over here.
Let me show you.
A family member has arrived on the scene.
-As you can see-- -Move aside.
Look…
Don't create a spectacle.
Let them through.
As you can see, a family member is here.
They are all gone!
Do not make a scene!
They were God-like people. Don't speculate.
Easy.
They were great people!
The first one to arrive was the sister from Panipat. Sujata.
We had to ensure that she didn't faint due to the shock.
First, we told her everything. Then we consoled her.
We told her, "Life and death is in God's hands."
"Something bad has taken place."
"Neither you nor I can change what has happened."
We heard that they were simple and religious people.
Yes. The neighbours can tell you.
They were all great people. Ever so great people.
Their family is gripped with sorrow.
In no condition to talk.
And one can only hope,
that a thorough investigation into this matter
will finally bring answers to the family which has seen it all.
My elder brother informed us
that something terrible had happened to our family in Delhi.
I asked him, "What has happened?"
He said that the entire family was wiped out.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
As I switched on the TV, I saw the shocking news.
I was devastated.
We could not believe it.
But then we saw coverage of the house and the location.
It got confirmed that this was our family.
It is our sister's family.
This is how we came to know.
She was always busy at work, such was her nature.
For her, family came above all. She kept the family together.
She was unique in her selfless love for the family.
She never demanded anything from anyone.
We went to Rawatbhata
and after meeting Bhuvnesh, we fixed the marriage.
After just three months of being engaged they got married
They were leading an honest and simple life.
No signs of struggle or conflict.
Why did it all happen, and how? We know nothing.
We are clueless.
The men left that evening. We ladies were left behind.
There is immense pain
and a deep emptiness in our hearts.
I doubt this will ever be filled.
Our family has lost their loving sister.
Our house has lost a daughter.
Our family has lost such a nice son-in-law.
We lost our loving nieces and nephew.
Even future generations will never be able to fill this void they have left.
I spoke to Tina that day itself.
She had called me on the night of the incident.
I spoke to Lalit too.
We spoke for five minutes.
"Everything is fine with us. How are things? Everything is good."
"We will talk in the morning."
After a girl is married, her brother, her parents, her whole family,
we all worry about how she is coping in her new house.
Hoping that she is happy.
But our family or me,
never had reason to worry about Tina.
Rarely do you get to see such a perfectly paired couple.
They honoured each other's wishes always.
Their rapport was too good to be true.
This is Lalit and Tina.
Wedding poses.
"Made for each other."
It was painful to see my mother deal with it.
There is good and evil in the world. Both in equal measure.
I don't know what is the truth and what are the lies?
The big story in the national capital…
The survivors of the Burari family have spoken out, they say,
"How could a family go from throwing
a big bash for their daughter to mass suicide in 14 days?"
This is a case of suicide.
The second daughter, Sujata, refuses such claims
and she says they were murdered.
Lies are being peddled against my family.
They are all lies. It is a cooked-up story.
Sujata, the sister from Panipat had already arrived,
and the situation was growing from bad to worse.
They objected to our portrayal of this incident as a mass suicide.
-What do you think happened? -Someone has killed them all.
The police are trying to suppress the truth.
They are definitely hiding something to save themselves.
None of the relatives were willing to accept
that this was a mass suicide.
The eldest son, Dinesh, was living in Rajasthan at the time.
This is what he said.
My family was so bold that I do not buy this theory.
The kids and my brothers were so bold.
I can't believe they would do something like this.
They were not weak or helpless.
They had no idea about the reality of the situation,
even they couldn't tell us what had happened.
They were adamant that it was a murder and we were misreporting it.
This news spread across the country and we were accused of reporting lies.
"You are reporting what the police want."
We want justice!
Justice for the dead family!
We demand justice for the dead family!
-Hail Karni Sena! -Hail Sena!
By then, some people started sloganeering.
They were shouting murder, accusing the police.
Some members belonging to their community, there's no point in naming them,
they have a social organization.
They arrived at the crime scene.
This is a lie.
They are trying to wash their hands of their responsibility.
The police aren't accountable even to the Delhi Government,
let alone to this poor family.
I declare that the family is not alone. Karni Sena is with them.
Karni Sena reached the crime scene
and claimed that this family,
some of the deceased were their relatives.
Basically, they were from Chittorgarh, Rajasthan.
They threatened to shake up not just the city,
but the whole country in their fight for justice.
We will do whatever it takes to get justice for our family in Delhi.
What usually happens in a conflicted case like this is,
the first person we tend to blame is the police.
The crowds were getting out of hand.
We were prepared in case things got worse.
This is Delhi. We had to get this under control.
They're mistaken if they think they can bully the police.
The police are clearly trying to dismiss the case.
We strongly demand a federal-CBI probe. A case of murder must be registered.
"What's your demand," we asked.
We registered this as a murder case.
We don't think it is, but still, we are doing it.
We are investigating. We'll take care of every aspect.
You can see the FIR.
In that, we have explained everything in detail.
Case registration isn't the end of the investigation.
It is just the beginning of the investigation.
The latest on the multiple deaths in Delhi's Burari area…
A murder case has been registered.
This, a day after 11 persons of one family
were found mysteriously dead in their home in Delhi.
Sometimes people presume that the local police
will just want to hush up the case.
When the Crime Branch is there, they're perceived to be efficient,
the case will be in good hands
and they will conduct a thorough investigation.
Crime Branch specializes in handling cases of sensitive nature.
In any crime, there's something called a mens rea.
There has to be knowledge. There has to be intention.
And there has to be a motive behind a crime.
Why should they die? And who should kill them? And for what?
From the Crime Branch side, I was the first person to reach.
See, my reaction was not shock. It was curiosity
because I've handled cases of multiple murders before.
So my first instinct was,
this could be a hanging after the crime has been committed.
I kept calling my team.
I specifically called for Satish.
He is not one of the best. He is my best investigating officer.
Cop portrayals in films are sometimes positive
and sometimes negative.
We feel happy when the portrayal is positive.
We put our heart and soul into catching the culprit.
And when we solve the case, we are happy.
The moment I entered that house in Burari,
the sight I saw when I climbed up those stairs to the first floor,
I can never forget that sight.
I felt devastated. I felt sick in my stomach.
We investigated the case from all possible angles.
The plan was to rule out things one by one.
We went around searching the house very, very systematically.
There was nothing disturbed. There was no forced entry.
There was milk in the refrigerator
and there were some traces of food being taken.
If this was a homicide, there would be some kind of struggle.
And it was almost as if they were hanging in peace.
Between the second and the first floor, this mesh was there.
It was covered.
I wondered if it could be moved? It was very light.
It was made of fiberglass and wood.
And then I could see that the ligatures were equidistant from each other.
It is like a Rubik's Cube, you know.
I thought this is too difficult to stage.
Further angles were revealed in our investigation,
which we had to rule out.
Bhuvnesh, "Bhupi," tried to free himself.
One of his hands was free, showing clear signs of struggle.
The kids couldn't struggle as their feet were tightly bound.
Their hands were tied behind.
They used telephone wires to ruthlessly bind them.
Even if they tried to free themselves, they couldn't.
They had tape over their mouths and eyes.
Cotton stuffed in their ears.
Their mother…
she was found lying by the side of her bed.
Her body was half-turned.
And there was a scarf around her neck, like everyone else.
And there was a belt.
On one side of her neck, there were marks.
Spotted by both FSL and us.
They were of the same size as the belt, but only on one side.
In hanging cases, usually the marks go upwards like a V.
It was suspicious, to say the least.
The bodies were carefully removed and numbered.
They were properly packed before we shifted them to the mortuary.
And all this was done despite the chaos outside.
Five thousand people around. So many cameras were lurking.
We arranged for 11 ambulances.
Two men would carry the body,
one sat with the driver to keep the route clear.
Two ambulances would reverse in the lane
because there wasn't enough space to turn around.
They were parked exactly in front of the stairs.
As the bodies were being lowered,
we made sure that each body had the ligature intact.
And we packed them all in zip lock bags.
It was very painful to watch. We couldn't help but get emotional.
How could something like this happen?
How could children hang like that?
It was the same story then, and it remains the same today.
No one else dared to touch the bodies.
My colleagues and I
brought all the 11 bodies down, one by one.
It was a mammoth task.
One ambulance would leave and make way for the next one.
Covered from all sides.
In groups of two, we did this.
It took us two hours to just shift the bodies.
We had to do this carefully and bring them down one by one.
It was being telecast live.
The movement of the convoy was closely followed.
In the beginning, those who were exiting the crime scene
were sure that this was a murder.
A lot of police officers who had been inside felt the same way.
The reason being
that everyone had their hands tied,
their mouths were gagged, tied with telephone cables.
These were the big clues pointing at murder.
How could 11 people do this to themselves?
Why would they do such a thing?
It was evident that something strange had transpired.
We found evidence of a ritual performed the night before.
There was something odd in that crime scene.
As the investigation progressed, some new revelations came to light.
The CCTV footage was a turning point.
That camera covered the exterior of the crime scene house.
So we saw it all together.
Frame by frame, so that we don't miss a thing.
On 28th June, 2018,
Tina, wife of Lalit,
and her son purchased four stools.
On the night of 30th June when the main event took place,
at 9:40 p.m.,
Tina, wife of Lalit,
can be seen with another girl carrying newly purchased stools.
At 10:29 p.m.
Lalit's son opens the plywood shop,
and brings a small bundle of wires. He takes it upstairs.
We also found that the scarves and sarees used for hanging
were purchased from the market.
The footage from that night
showed the movement of only family members.
Nobody else entered the house after that.
That assured us that no outsider was involved.
Now the question was,
"Is it an inside job?"