Delhi mass deaths: Everything looked normal, recalls the man who saw the family last

NEW DELHI: Hours before they were found dead at their house in Delhi's Burari, they had ordered 20 chapatis for dinner. The boy who delivered the food at the house on Tuesday claimed that everything at the house seemed normal he went inside. "They had placed an order for 20 rotis at 10:30 pm. I went to deliver it at 10:45 pm. The daughter took the order and asked her father to pay me. Everything was normal," delivery boy Rishi said.

Rishi was the last person who saw the members of the family before they were found dead at their house in Burari on Sunday.

The mystery over the 11 deaths has deepened with the police claiming that they have evidence which hints towards this being a case of suicide, while the relatives have been insisting that the family has been killed. 

The relatives said the Bhatia family was gearing up for the wedding of Priyanka (33) who got engaged last month. She was among those found dead at the house yesterday.

Police are investigating if the family was involved in occult practices and if they killed themselves willingly to attain 'salvation'. The police say that they have found handwritten notes from the house, which indicate a "religious or spiritual angle" to the deaths.

The handwritten notes stated "the human body is temporary and one can overcome fear by covering their eyes and mouth".

However, the relatives of the Bhatia family have filed a police complaint claiming that it not a case of suicide. "We have filed a police complaint because this isn't a suicide case. I don't believe in media reports. They had never been in contact with any 'baba'," Bhatia family's relative Dinesh said.

He also rubbished reports of the 11 pipes in the house having any relation with the deaths. "The pipes in the wall might have been for ventilation," he added.

The police have recovered 11 pipes from the house which they found mysterious due to their placement. What the police found suspicious was that the placement of the 11 pipes is similar to the placement of how the bodies were found from the house. 

The police are trying to ascertain whether the four pipes placed in a different way signify the male members while the others denote the female members of the family. One of the pipes is placed away from the others, raising suspicions of whether that has any relation to the body of the elderly woman found on the floor of the house.

As per the police, they have also recovered two registers from the house in which the family has scribbled things about getting salvation (moksha). The register allegedly specifies a pattern in which the family was planning to commit suicide. 

The family was allegedly writing notes in these registers since 2015 and had even listed the date of their death.