Death of 11 family members in India may be ritual mass suicide, police say

NEW DELHI —Police are investigating the mysterious deaths of 11 members of a deeply religious New Delhi family, 10 of whom were found bound and hanging in their home with handwritten notes detailing a mystical suicide ritual.

An 11th family member, a 77-year-old woman, was found dead in an adjacent room. The bodies were discovered Sunday.

Senior police official Alok Kumar, commenting on the deaths of four male and seven female members of the Bhatia family, said Tuesday that “on the face of it,” the grisly scene “looks like a case of suicide.” Post-mortem reports and testimonies of relatives and neighbors are being analyzed, and police probes have not ruled out murder as a cause of the deaths.

Kumar said notes found at the Hindu family’s residence had details about how the mouths and eyes of the family should be taped and where each of the family members should be positioned for the ritual. “They have been maintaining a diary for the last two to three years, and in it, we found quite a graphic description, which matched the condition of the bodies at the scene of the crime.”

The notes also contained a description of the family’s final meal — a stack of 20 loaves of flatbread delivered to their home earlier that evening.

Police are investigating whether the family followed a particular guru or spiritual leader. Neighbors and relatives said the Bhatias were deeply religious, prayed three times a day and went to a nearby temple. Relatives said there was never any indication of extreme beliefs, though the family’s faith had intensified after one its members — 45-year-old Lalit — had made a miraculous recovery after a plank of plywood fell on his head more than a decade ago.

Nonetheless, the case has sent shock waves through India, where self-appointed, charismatic holy men hold huge sway, and where a number of recent cases involving rapes, abuse and deaths of followers of spiritual gurus have sparked concerns about how much power these men have.

The family was found Sunday morning when a 79-year-old neighbor, Gurcharan Singh, went inside the home to ask why they had not opened their convenience store that morning and saw the 10 bodies hanging. “I saw it and came out. I couldn’t bear to look,” he said. The family’s dog, now in police custody, had been tied up on the roof, Singh told daily newspaper