Burari deaths: Blindfolded in faith - DNA takes a close look on the otherwise normal lives of the family

Standing at India Gate, the family smiles at the camera capturing snapshots of memories. In another photograph, the children and the matriarch encapsulate a bubble of love. These are picture perfect moments to share on social media. They cut a commendable figure of a happy family, almost faultless. Neighbours vouch for its simplicity, words like sanskar (values) and adarsh (principles) pepper the conversation with an ease that belies the chilling news they woke up to on July 1.

Eleven members of the Chundawat family, all of them blindfolded, were found hanging inside their house in Sant Nagar, Burari in Delhi in what is being seen as a ‘mass suicide for salvation’.

Since then, accounts of the victims’ ‘normal’ behaviour have been competing with speculation that Lalit Chundawat, youngest son and one of the deceased was the brain behind the horrific incident, convincing the family that the ritual which resulted in their deaths would bring them close to God.

Friends for more than three decades, Manoj Kumar, who stays in Sant Nagar, offers to give a walk through Lalit’s “character”, which, he complains has been tarnished since the death.

“He was a simple man. The entire family was so. In these 35 years since we have been friends, never had I heard him raise voice or lose temper. He was the most amiable person you would ever come across,” he says, darting a cautious glance at a group of women outside the house of horror.

“This has become a spectacle. People from anywhere and everywhere are coming to see the house as if it’s a tourist attraction and adding their version to the story,” fumes Kumar. He doesn’t hasten to add that he has been in and out of television interviews, trying to clear the air on occult rumours.

In a country that believes anything that screams god and holy power, blind faith on godmen and/or tantriks and illogical acts of devotion is common. Recently, the Madhya Pradesh police arrested one Trilokinath from Indore for allegedly sexually assaulting women in the garb of healing them. Surprisingly, he was also a darling of many state police officers who used his “powers” to get postings. 

In another similar incident which casts a sorry shadow on reasoning, Chhattisgarh MP Ambesh Jangde invited a tantrik, later identified as Ram Lal Kashyap, to the Vidhan Sabha. According to reports, the ‘baba’ purified the Assembly of all evils by chanting mantras and sprinkling holy water, paving way for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to form government in the state again. Chhattisgarh speaker Gaurishankar Agrawal even went on record saying he even got himself clicked with the ‘baba’.  

Notes in diary point to superstition

It is a raw nerve to touch — reference to Chundawats being more superstitious than religious.

The police have recovered diaries and registers that Lalit maintained as “messages” from his father who passed away ten years ago. Chronicled over the years, the scribbled notes give an unsettling description of a man slave to his own delusions. Lalit believed that his father communicated with him, advising him on how to “meet god” — an act that wiped out the entire family in one swift stroke of gross credulity.

The 45-year-old led the family towards unquestioning faith. Sample a June 19, 2015 entry: “Maine jo kaha tha aaj woh hua hai, aage bhi aise hi karte rehna hai. Vishwaas bana ke rakhna hai”. (What I have said happened today. Continue doing the same and have faith)

Loved ones question mass suicide theory

Angry relatives, however, eagerly tender strong rebuttals wrapped in argument of staunch devout. Not willing to agree that under the facade of a seemingly ordinary family, lurked an eerie reality of devotion stretched too far. “Jijaji was a deeply religious man. Kya vo gunaah hai? (Is that a crime) He performed pooja path (rituals) on a daily basis. Does it make him a tantrik?,” asks Mamta Hada, sister of Tina, Lalit’s wife, the only person apart from him to have found dead with her face uncovered.

Eyes fixed on a lunch of dal and roti, Hada talks about the sensible and mature Lalit whom she consulted over family matters. “If he was into sorcery, he would have mentioned at some point. Koi upaay (remedy) batate karne ko. Didi too believed immensely in god. Humein badnaam kiya ja raha hai ojha tantrik ke naam par (We are being disgraced),” she sobs.

Tina’s younger sister, however, is tight-lipped on the notebooks recovered from the house. She cannot explain the uncanny similarity between the manner the Chundawats hanged themselves and the last writing. There is also a doomsday prediction from which the family will be saved — Antim samay mein, aakhri ichchha ki purti ke waqt, aasman hilegi dharti kaanpegi, us waqt tum ghabrana mat, mantra ka jaap badha dena, mein aakar utar loonga aur ko bhi utarne mein madad karunga (At the end of it, the skies will burst, the earth with shake. Don’t be scared at that moment. Keep chanting the mantras, I will come and save you all).”

Police opine that Lalit saw this as another message from his dead father who would have acted as saviour during the ‘ritual’ of June 30 that went horrifyingly wrong. It was also recorded as the date “to meet god”, and attain salvation (aakhri ichchha), shedding further light on how neck deep the clan was into superstition.  

Like the kin, neighbours and friends, however, are naysayers in the matter. The morbid details in Lalit’s notebooks are a weak justification for them. 

“I have known the family since they moved in more than 20 years ago. Main toh ghar ki beti thi, itna aana jaana tha humara. Lalit and Bhavnesh treated me like their sister, and aunty (Narayani Devi) was like a mother. Not for a moment I felt something was amiss in them. Yes, they used to pray a lot, but how does it translate into witchcraft or andhvishwas (superstition)?,” questions Rita Sharma, who lives opposite the Chundawats.

She shares that they were devotees of Hanuman and ‘Mata Rani’ and did Sunderkand Path twice a day; activities that she feels trickled down into their demeanour too. “Adarsh beta tha Lalit.”

Her views are echoed by two women who have come from Panipat to be with the grieving family. Refusing to be named, they claim to be “best friends” of Sujata Nagpal, the daughter who, in their words, “survived being murdered”.

But they first want to talk about how good Devi and her sons were. “She used to call me every few days. When my son met with an accident, she ensured that Lalit checked on me every day. The bhabis were more like sisters with each other. They used to dote on Sujata too. Someone who had so much faith in god will never take their own life,” the woman says. 

But isn’t it a suicide triggered by Lalit’s delusion, a telling proof found in the diaries? “No, it is a murder. Haven’t you read in the newspapers that they have found five fingerprints?,” the three pounce in a unified defence. What about the diary? As onlookers wait for them to speak, they chose to, like Hada, not acknowledge the query.

As an afterthought, Sharma speaks. “So many people jot down their innermost feelings in diaries. Lalit could have maintained one too. Since I have not read it, I would assume that like the theory of the 11 pipes, this too is figment of imagination,” she concludes.

Sharma claims that the family was in the middle of renovating their two-storey residence that also housed a years’ old plywood shop and a recently-opened grocery store. Unused construction material in the vacant plot next to the now crime scene, testifies her statement. The pipes that have added mystery to the quagmire of deaths have outlet in the same plot. “This was for ventilation. Lalit got it constructed only two months ago because it was suffocating to sit inside the plywood shop,” she says. 

Neighbours struggling to get back to normalcy

It is 2:30 pm, third day since the mass suicide shocked the nation. The kith and kin are getting ready for a paath organised in the local gurudwara for aatma shanti. The middle class locality is struggling to inch towards normalcy with reporters and OB vans congesting the already narrow roads.

Sujata has just finished an angry and emotional outburst at a journalist who, like many others, wanted to know if the pipes were a “passage for the souls” after the Chundawats died. “Why don’t you ask them? Please let us mourn peacefully,” she screams and dashes inside a neighbour’s house.

“It was a murder,” whispers Shammi Batra, an ‘old friend’ of Lalit. How can he be so sure — the query is another walk down the memory lane. “Bahut achchhe log the ji. In the last 20 years of having known them, I haven’t come across a single incident where the brothers got into an argument with anyone. Lalit was polite to a fault, and the children were over-obedient,” Batra gushes. On Lalit’s relationship with his father, another barrage of adjectives is thrown. “Devta aadmi the unke father. Lalit was very close to him. Before he died, both of them managed the plywood business together. It is all rubbish that he was possessed by his father or communicated with him,” he defends his dead friend, as if on a cue where the conversation will veer towards next.

He leans on the “educated family” reasoning to deny reports of occult. Priyanka was working with an IT firm in Noida, while another girl Neetu was pursuing MSc, which according to Batra, spoke a lot about the psychic mobility the dead had to have not given into a senseless pursuit. “Priyanka was earning so well, around 4-5 lakh per annum. They spent Rs one lakh on her engagement and built such a nice, big house. No one will spend so much if he plans to die soon,” the senior woman from Panipat employs financial abundance as a reason to not be superstitious and having lost their lives at the hands of a criminal, though she admits the Chundawats had no enmity with anyone.  

As the mysterious deaths get uncovered with new twists and turns every day, the family while dealing with the humongous loss, wants all speculation to end.

Perhaps that is why there is a tactful silent confession that the 11 may have really committed suicide even as the mainstay remains that it is a murder. Praveen Nagpal, Lalit and Bhavnesh’s brother-in-law agrees to take side with news reports “for a moment”. “Maan lete hain bhakti mein vileen ho kar yeh sab kiya. Ho gaya ab jo hona tha (Even if they committed suicide seeking salvation, now what).”

“Can we please stop sensationalising it? Why cannot people respect the dead and let those left behind grieve?,” he asks, mirroring what Sujata said minutes ago.   

Few more women have clustered in front of the locked red gate which stands guard to many a frightening secret that still lay buried inside the house. Police probe is still underway, and the case will be etched firmly in the news and public memory for a long time to come.

It is philosophised by one of these spectators who has come to “see” the house, “They must have thought no one knows us while we are alive. Let us do something so that marne ke baad humein saari duniya jaan jaaye.”

WHEN FAITH LEAD MEN ASTRAY

Blind faith in god and his mortals have led to deaths, rapes, even elopement — all based on radicalisation by religion

1. In May, a baba in Barmer eloped with a minor girl. The 17-year-old victim’s family was ‘close’ to him and got themselves ‘healed’ using tantrik powers.
    
2. In April, the Delhi police registered a case of rape against a tantrik on the complaint of a Aman Vihar resident. She claimed the man assaulted her on the pretext of curing her of some illness.
    
3. Gurmeet Ram Rahim was sentenced to life imprisonment after a sessions court convicted him of raping two women followers at his dera.
    
4. Another godman Asaram Bapu is languishing in jail for raping a minor whose family was his devotee.
    
5. A 36-year-old woman from Moti Nagar, Delhi, killed her two daughters aged six and five when a tantrik asked her to do so. She suffocated them to death by sitting on them.
    
6. Shakurpur family found out that the ‘family tantrik’ was raping their daughter for past 12 years. Cops registered a case in February this year.
    
7. In April last year, a 30-year-old man killed his parents for astral projection. He confessed to the police that he worshipped Satan and did all this to appease the devil.

KIN AND KITH TALK ABOUT THE FAMILY

Opposed to the theories that are floating regarding the Burari deaths — most of which point at superstition and misguided belief — family and friends only remember them in good light

• “I have known the family since they moved in more than 20 years ago. Main toh ghar ki beti thi, itna aana jaana tha humara. Lalit and Bhavnesh treated me like their sister, and aunty was like a mother. Not for a moment I felt something was amiss,” says Rita Sharma, a neighbour of the Chundawat family.
   
• “If he (Lalit) was into sorcery, he would have mentioned at some point. Koi upaay batate karne ko. Didi too believed immensely in god. Humein badnaam kiya ja raha hai ojha tantrik ke naam par,” says a grieving Mamta Hada, sister of Tina, Lalit’s wife.

PSYCHOLOGISTS SPEAK

Experts say that the tragedy is the result of a shared psychotic disorder. The main symptom is the patient’s inability to tell fantasy from reality which leads to them living in an imaginary world. It also leads to forming an unshakable belief in false notions. They point out that since prominent signs like hallucination, violent behaviour, which are prevalent in other extreme form of mental illnesses, are not visible in delusional disorder, Lalit’s illness went undetected.

Alok Kumar Joint Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch

During investigation it has been found that Lalit exhibited signs of altered mental health. Expert opinion in this regard will be sought to conduct investigation into this aspect of the case.

Praveen Nagpal Lalit and Bhavnesh’s brother-in-law

Maan lete hain bhakti mein vileen ho kar yeh sab kiya. Ho gaya ab jo hona tha. Can we please stop sensationalising it? Why cannot people respect the dead and let those left behind grieve?