HOUSE DESEALED, COPS HAND IT OVER TO REMAINING KIN

NEW DELHI: The Burari house where 11 members of a family were found dead on June 1 this year, was de-sealed and handed over to the surviving members of the family by a Delhi court on the evening of October 15.

Eleven members of the Bhatia family — Narayan Devi,77, her sons Bhavnesh Bhatia (50) and Lalit Bhatia (45), their wives Savita (48) and Tina (42), her daughter Pratibha (57) and five grandchildren, Priyanka (33), Neetu (25), Monu (23), and Dhruv and Shivam (both 15) — were found dead on the morning of June 1 by a neighbour. Police probe, autopsy reports and handwritten notes from the house so far has concluded that the family was performing a ritual that went wrong, leading to their deaths.

Narayan’s eldest son, Dinesh Singh Chundawat, moved to the Burari home with his wife, Kamlesh Hada, sister Sujata Nagpal, and a female house help and spent three nights there to reject rumours that the house was ‘haunted and those who died inside it were ‘possessed and had turned into ghosts’.

Dinesh said he had been hearing such fake stories ever since the deaths were reported .

“Disturbing rumours that we were planning to turn the house into a temple because nobody wanted to buy the property were being spread. We desperately wanted to put a rest to such rumours and for that it was necessary for us to enter and live in the house without performing a hawan or puja,” said Dinesh, who lives in Rajasthan’s Chittorgarh.

He also added that during their stay they did not face any ‘fear or trouble’, but instead felt ‘immense peace’. They, however, admitted that the pictures, clothes and other items of the dead family members left behind in the house made them ‘emotional’. Police unlocked the house and handed over the keys to Chundawats around 6pm on Sunday.