[Trigger Warning: Suicide]

On June 17, 2018, the Chundawat household was full of dancing and laughter as they celebrated their beloved Priyanka's engagement together. Priyanka's cousins Neetu and Maneka performed to party music with bright smiles and their guests cheered, joining in with high spirits.

This just looked like a typical Indian middle-class family. The Chundawats were well-educated, financially stable(in fact, thriving), close-knit, very social, pleasant, and totally "normal."

Little did their friends and family know that 2 weeks later, they would be found deceased, all from an apparent mass suicide, hanging from the same roof under which they celebrated so joyously just days ago.

The 'Crime Scene' at Burari, Delhi

[Warning: The following details are disturbing.]

The Chundawats owned a grocery shop that was usually open early every morning, in time for people to get their daily milk supply. However, on July 1, 2018, there seemed to be no activity in the shop, which was odd. After a few hours, one of the locals made his way up to see something profoundly disturbing.

10 bodies hung lifeless in the living room, from an iron mesh above, suspended by colorful dupattas (shawls).

None
There were two brothers Bhavnesh(50), Lalit(45), their wives Savita(48) and Tina(42) respectively, their sister Pratibha(48), and their children Neetu(25), Maneka(23), Dhruv(15), Shivam(15), and Priyanka(33) | Facebook

Nine of them were in the form of a square(like the face of a Rubik's cube), at equidistant lengths from each other, while Pratibha was opposite the others. Some of them had their legs and hands tied with wires, and they were blindfolded and gagged with cotton buds in their ears.

And inside one of the rooms was the matriarch of the family, the eldest of them all, the 11th member, 77-year-old Narayan Devi, also dead.

"It was shocking. I stayed only for 10–15 seconds before rushing downstairs to call my seniors. At the time I did not see whose hands were tied and whose eyes were covered. I just saw a lot of bodies hanging, just like branches of a tree."

— Rajeev Tomar, head constable and first officer at the scene

On the roof, right near the mesh that they were hanging from was their pet dog, Tommy, barking continuously, probably having witnessed the entire chilling event. He was found tied up, in a severely agitated state, with a high fever.

The Investigation of the 'Mass Suicide'

With this case being one of the most bizarre, if not the most, it was automatically sensationalized and speculated upon wildly by the media. Several people, especially the other members of the family(those who did not live in that house), refused to believe that the Chundawats did this to themselves.

How could these people who were loved and remembered so fondly have done this? From a frail 77-year-old to the youngest of them, 15-year-olds Dhruv and Shivam, how could an entire family want to end their lives, all 11 of them at the same time?

At first, people believed they were all murdered and that afterward, the murderer(s) staged such a scene. However, law enforcement officials examined the CCTV footage, the scene of the crime, and the family's bodies, to deduce that there were no signs of foul play/murder.

What they found on the CCTV footage was that some of the family members had calmly carried stools and wires to their house, the same objects used that fateful night.

It appeared as though they had all attempted to commit suicide.

11 Diaries that Told a Whole New Story

When officials searched the family members' belongings, they found 11 diaries that finally gave them an idea of what happened.

The diaries had been dictated by the brother who was considered the most mature and responsible of the family, Lalit. After the passing of Bhopal Singh, the family patriarch, in 2007, Lalit had taken on the role of leading the family and taking care of everything.

Here is where it gets bizarre.

The words in the diary were not everyday random entries, but actually what Lalit believed to be instructions/communications from his late father Bhopal Singh's spirit. These diaries held instructions as to what each family member's role will be, and even mentioned the most trivial of tasks and how to do them.

For example, in hindsight, the neighbors said that Savita, the wife of Bhavnesh, would almost always be in the kitchen. It was later revealed that the diaries had assigned this role to her, and similarly other behavioral guides that all the family members were told to follow.

At times, the diaries had scoldings as well, like chiding young Dhruv for spending too much time on the phone. The diaries repeated that not following these instructions would result in punishment and that they were troubling Lalit by not obeying.

Even So, How Could None of Them Object to Dying Together?

If there's anything that sounds so deeply strange, it's this, yes. But there are explanations for Lalit's behavior that go way back and could be the root of this.

Lalit had suffered not one, but three huge life events that had seriously impacted him. One of them was a major accident, from which he had severe head injuries. Another was an incident at his former job, where after a dispute, he was "pushed under several sheets of plywood and set on fire."

After this incident, he seemed to have lost his voice. It's unclear if he could not speak, or chose not to because it was too painful to talk about anything. But it was at this time of intense physical and emotional hurt that experts believe Lalit had developed psychosis, a condition that changes the way someone processes information and causes them to lose touch with reality.

Some of the major symptoms of psychosis are hallucinations and delusions. And after the significant trauma Lalit underwent and the untreated PTSD, this condition intensified greatly.

After his father's death in February 2007, things completely changed and Lalit began making entries in the diaries.

As reported by friends of the family, he said that he had heard his father's voice saying that if they sang a certain devotional hymn every day, Lalit would regain his voice. And one day, a year later, as they sang, to everyone's astonishment, Lalit joined in and finished the song by himself.

It appears that from this point on, things really looked up for the family. Their businesses were doing well, the children did great academically, Priyanka was employed in a top MNC and was set to be married soon.

Professionals deduce that the family began to have a "shared psychosis" where they all followed the instructions, making a pact to never spill these secrets outside.

Some Questions Will Go Unanswered Forever

Did the family members like Lalit's wife, who had a master's in sociology, and the youngsters who were also well-educated really not show any resistance? We will never know.

What we do know is that the diaries held clear instructions as to what they should do on the night of this ritual, and they matched the crime scene exactly. The grandmother Narayan was to be in the room since she was too elderly to stand on a small stool. They were to perform the ritual of replicating a banyan tree's hanging branches (vat tapasya) during which Bhopal Singh would return and "save" them.

The most likely truth is that this family truly believed they would not die and that they would survive. Sadly, that night, they ended their lives together, none of them being able to escape. It was observed that the children were bound extra tight, perhaps to prevent any struggles.

The last living member of the family in that house, their dog Tommy, suffered from depression and passed away just 23 days later. The postmortem report showed that trauma and shock had led to a cardiac arrest.

This nightmarish story is a painful example of how much harm can come out of not treating mental conditions as they should be. I sincerely hope that with more awareness being brought about for mental wellness, it is no more a taboo and is taken much more seriously.

And I hope we never see such a case again.

Sources: