Alwaght- Eleven members of an Indian family have been found dead in New Delhi on Sunday, with 10 members blindfolded and hanging from their home's ceiling.
The victims included a 77-year-old woman, her two sons, their wives, a daughter and five grandchildren, the police said. Ten of the bodies, which were found by a neighbor, were hanged from an iron rail attached to the ceiling, and an 11th body, that of the elderly woman, was lying on the ground.
Several officials described the tragedy as a twisted spiritual mass suicide attempt as during a search in their house in Burari, in the north of the capital, hand-written notes were found that pointed “toward observance of some definite spiritual or mystical practices by the whole family,” police said in a statement.
“Coincidentally, these notes have strong similarity with the manner in which the mouths, eyes etc of the deceased were tied and taped,” the statement said.
Ten blindfolded bodies were found with cotton stuffed in their ears.
While police await the autopsy reports on the victims, including two 15-year-old boys, authorities have not discounted homicide as a possible cause of death. Treating the incident as a murder case, law enforcement teams are now analyzing call records from the victims' mobiles for possible clues and are interviewing witnesses. “It is still too early (to know what happened). It is an ongoing investigation and we haven't ruled out anything,” a police source told AFP.
According to one version of the events, shared with India Today by an anonymous police source, the mass suicide unfolded after family members were served sedatives with their dinner. Then at least one of the family allegedly proceeded to blindfold the rest of the unconscious victims before hanging them.
