What Bansals told neighbours, priest: We are going away for a few days

SENIOR BUREAUCRAT, SON COMMIT SUICIDE

IN THE early hours of Tuesday, bureaucrat Bal Kishan Bansal, 60, and his son Yogesh Bansal, 31, committed suicide in their east Delhi apartment. The incident came two months after Bansal’s wife Satyabala and daughter Neha had hanged themselves in the same apartment, while the former director general in the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs was in custody after being arrested on graft charges.

The evening before their suicide, Bansal and Yogesh had reportedly told neighbours, as well as the society priest, that they were “going away for a few days”.

The father and son are also believed to have procured ropes and asked their domestic help, Rachna, to come late Tuesday morning. It was Rachna who found the main door of the Bansals’ first floor apartment, at Neelkanth Apartments in Madhu Vihar, ajar. Inside, she found the father and the son in different rooms, hanging from ceiling fans.

“Rachna rushed downstairs and informed me... I ran to their flat,” said society guard Hemant Kumar. He said he immediately informed the secretary of the society and police were alerted about the incident.

Later on Tuesday, at the Bansals’ residence, newspapers remained neatly stacked at the door of the apartment till the Delhi Police’s Forensic team arrived in the afternoon to collect evidence.

According to the society’s security guards, Bansal and Yogesh spent most of their time in their native village in Haryana’s Hisar. On days when they were in Delhi, they ordered food from outside while the domestic help came once a day to help clean the house.

The Bansals were a religious family who kept to themselves, said their neighbours. “They barely spoke to anyone... they became more withdrawn after the death of Bansal’s wife and daughter in July,” said a neighbour on the condition of anonymity.

The family lived in a “simple” manner and most of their neighbours said they didn’t know that Bansal was posted “at such a high position in the government.”

“We never saw an official car, or a guard or paraphernalia of any kind. If you saw their house, you would never be able to tell that it was the house of a director general in a Union ministry,” said a neighbour who met the Bansals last week.

“I told him that he should get Yogesh married and he agreed to think about it. They were still shocked by the deaths in the family... but I never thought they would take such an extreme step,” he said.

Though the family was a “quiet” one, they helped their neighbours whenever they could, said their neighbours.

Society priest Arjun Kumar Pandey, who talked to Bansal and Yogesh Monday evening, agreed with this statement.

The priest said Yogesh called him to his house at 6 pm on Monday. “He smiled and opened the door, offered me water and asked me about the puja (sundarkand) that they had asked me to perform on their behalf since the 16th of this month,” he said.

The Bansals had asked the priest to offer prayers after the senior government official was granted bail. On Monday, they gave the priest Rs 2,100 and a packet of ghee to continue the puja while “they were away.”

“I told them they did not have to pay me right now and they could do so later but they both insisted. Since the death of the other members of the family, they had been distributing alms every few days,” the priest added.

Pandey said he had known the Bansals for 12 years and was yet to come to terms with the death of the entire family.

Oinam Anand B K Bansal and his son Yogesh were found in different rooms, hanging from ceiling fans.