Onlookers gathering at the Bhatia residence in Delhi's Burari area | Photo Credit: BCCL Mumbai: A man here committed suicide after allegedly watching continuous television coverage of the Burari mass-suicide that rocked the whole country earlier last month. His wife discovered the body of her 63-year-old husband at their Goregaon residence here on Friday morning. The victim, Krishna Shetty was found hanging from the ceiling inside his home on Goregaon's Film City Road. Officials with the Dindoshi police said that the victim, a hotelier owned a hotel in Chakala in Andheri-East. They added that the hotel had been suffering losses since 2015 which had driven Shetty to depression. On the night he decided to take the extreme step, Shetty had been watching television reports about how 11 members of the same family committed suicide in the national capital. A report by Hindustan Times claims that his wife had advised him against watching the coverage, however, he did not pay heed to her advice. Shetty's daughter recalls her father referring to Delhi's Bhatia family over the phone as "daring", saying that they had a lot of "courage". Psychiatrists have described the Burari incident as a case of ‘shared psychotic disorder’ that drove 11 people of the same family including two minor boys to take the extreme step. As per reports, it is being speculated that the family had planned every step of the way beforehand which has made this case even more appalling. The Burari mass suicides earlier last month sent shockwaves across the length and breadth of the nation. Police investigation revealed that 11 people of the same family hung themselves to death while performing a ritual allegedly following the directions of the family head, 44-year-old Lalit Bhatia. Their bodies were found by neighbours who claimed that the family had given out no indication that they were planning something as sinister as what happened. The incident has revealed how India is in dire need to address the mental health problem looming over it. Must Read: Delhi Burari deaths case: All family members had specific tasks from June 26<doc-sep>Police personnel and people near the house, where 11 members of a family- four men, three women and four girls- were found hanging from an iron grill, in Burari area Relatives during cremation of the 11 members of a family, who were found hanging at in their house in Burari, at Nigambodh Ghat in New Delhi on Monday, July 2, 2018. A hearse van drives out carrying bodies of victims drives out near the site where 11 family members were found dead inside their home Burari deaths: How a ritual to free ‘spirits’ proved fatal for the Bhatia family NEW DELHI: Analysis of CCTV footage recovered from the lane in Sant Nagar , Burari, where a family of 11 allegedly committed mass suicide , has revealed that each member of the household was assigned a specific task for the havan preceding their deaths. The videos show the family members carrying the ingredients over a week before June 30.Police have also mapped the house and recovered nine stools, new clothes and wires that were stocked for the ritual, five basic cellphones and an iPad that is locked.The preparations for the ritual started on June 26. Bhavnesh was seen meeting a priest at a temple. The next day Lalit was seen carrying a packet containing the doctor’s tape and clothes that were used to strengthen the wires from which they were found hanging. On June 28, Lalit is seen bringing in the wood for the havan.In one of the diary entries made between June 28 and 30, Bhavnesh was instructed to withdraw money that was to be invested in their grocery business within 15 days. In an entry on June 30, four words — Mangal, Budh, Shukra and Shani — were found written on a page the purpose of which is being deciphered.A Crime Branch team was sent to Rajasthan to take the statements of the family members of Lalit’s wife Tina. They said they had been offered to conduct a ritual to help improve their financial condition. Tina’s family members said the Bhatias didn’t find Lalit’s behaviour a cause of concern since he hadn’t harmed anyone in the household or his workers.On Friday, cops recreated the sequence of events mentioned by Lalit in the diaries. This was also done to establish whether someone from outside had helped the family hang themselves.The diaries were also shown to some of the family members who visited Burari police station. Lalit’s brother, Dinesh, claimed that the notings were in someone else’s handwriting. He also denied seeing the diaries at the house when he went for Priyanka’s engagement ceremony. Crime Branch has so far questioned 130 people, including the neighbours, relatives and Priyanka’s fiance, who claimed to be unaware of rituals followed by the family.<doc-sep>FILE: Delhi Police take away the stools, which were supposed to be used by the Bhatia family members while committing suicide, at Burari in New Delhi on Friday. PTI Photo NEW DELHI: Even a week after the mysterious Burari deaths , the police are yet to come out with an answer to the puzzle related to the alleged mass suicide The police are delving into occult, psychology, superstition and latest investigative techniques to crack one of the most sensational cases in the national capital in the recent times.It's been a week since 11 members of the Burari-based Chundawat family were found dead under mysterious circumstances inside their house.At the centre of all this is a family, the neighbours remember as "sweet, helpful and religious", one that was looking forward to Priyanka Bhatia's marriage, "the first wedding among the children" and had even started preparations for the big day that was scheduled in December.Last Sunday, when people were lazing around in the comfort of their homes, news channels suddenly started flashing about the deaths of 11 members of a family in north Delhi's Burari.With their faces covered in pieces of white cloth and mouths taped and hands and legs tied, a video showing 10 members hanging, was anything but gory. The family matriarch was found lying in another room with ligature marks on her neck. 'Was it a murder or a suicide? ', 'If it was a murder, who were the persons involved in executing such a brutal murdered and what was the motive?, 'If the family had committed suicide, what could be the reason that could have driven 11 members to take such an extreme step?' --- myriad questions like these are doing the rounds but neither the investigators nor the family's close ones had any clue.The family members kept alleging that it was a murder but found it hard to point to a motive while dismissing suicide theories saying that the family was a "prosperous one" and had no "financial issues".The investigators registered a murder case since the 77-year-old Narayan Devi was found lying in a room on the floor, and initially it was suspected she had been strangulated but the initial autopsy report suggested that all the members had died of hanging, more or less cementing the fact that it was a case of suicide.But the mystery lingered as to why a prosperous family, that was doing well for itself, would take such an extreme step.The answers were found in notes recovered from the house by the police which had writings about 'badh tapasya', getting into a banyan-tree like formation to attain something great, finding the 'road to God' and detailed notes about tying feet and hands, and covering mouths to appease God.More morbid details emerged as it was found in the notes that Lalit Singh Chundawat, Narayan Devi's younger son, had started getting "visitations" from his father, who had died in 2007" and it was on his instructions that from March this years, notes about replicating "badh tapasya" were being written.It had also mentioned that the members would not die and Lalit's father's spirit would come and save them. "The sky and earth will start shaking but you need not fear. I will come and rescue you," one of the notes mentions.Lalit's elder brother, Dinesh Singh Chundawat, who lives in Kota, Rajasthan and his sister, Sujata Nagpal, who lives in Panipat, told the police that they had no idea about the notes or the 11 registers maintained by their families in the last 11 years. "Dinesh started sweating when we showed him photocopies of the notes. He said that he had no idea about the notes or registers," said one of the investigators.Some family members of Lalit's wife Tina, however, told police that they had heard Lalit being visited by his father's spirit and him assuming his father's alter-ego. The family, meanwhile, has accused media of portraying them as one that practices occult.Police, who had unofficially consulted doctors at VIMHANS for the case, were informed that the family could have been suffering from 'shared psychosis', in which one person's delusional beliefs are shared by others.But how could it be that no one opposed Lalit, not even one of his elder brother's daughters, who was pursuing Masters in Forensics? "Delusional people are quite convincing, experts have told us. Lalit was quite loving towards his family but he exercised considerable control on the family, including his elder brother. "The children would not even try to disobey what he said, probably because they thought he was like their grandfather," said an officer.With things pointing towards psychological issues as being at the centre of the tragedy, police are likely to carry out psychological autopsy, a relatively new investigative technique earlier adopted in Sunanda Pushkar death case and Aarushi Talwar murder case.A police officer said that psychological autopsy is secondary form of investigation but it is admissible as evidence, as is clear from Pushkar's case in which the police filed the chargesheet, on the basis of it.In psychological autopsy, there is a reconstruction of the psychological state of the deceased just before or in the final moments of death based on interviews of the victims kin, narratives of the social and occupational contacts and other records.It may extend backward to a few weeks or months. "But here the difficulty is that it is not just about one individual, there are 11 members and no family member living in that house is alive and so the reconstruction will be limited. However, there are plenty of written records, an analysis of which will confirm the impressions the police already seem to have made," IHBAS director Nimesh Desai said.Police are now awaiting the post-mortem report so that they can initiate the process of psychological autopsy.<doc-sep>Delhi's Crime Branch team suspects that Lalit Bhatia, the alleged mastermind of the mass suicides in Burari, used to frequent cremation grounds and isolated places in the city to learn about ghosts and souls, especially after the demise of his father 10 years ago. The information is based on one of the many registers recovered from the Bhatia residence. Delhi police has already established the handwriting in the register was that of Priyanka, one of the 11 members of the family who were found dead on Sunday. A crime branch official told Mail Today that Priyanka even liked a Facebook page that posts content about ghosts. Since Lalit is at the centre of the incident - with police saying he may have driven the entire family to commit 'mass suicide' -every small clue related to him is being thoroughly investigated. Read | Burari deaths: How the Bhatia family spent its last five days A crime branch team also visited Udaipur to question the family of Tina, Lalit's wife. "We want to know any facts that Tina could have shared about Lalit or the activities of the house with her family members. It will help us analyse the behaviour and mindset of Lalit and other members,," said a senior official, requesting anonymity. Crime branch has also recorded statements of 13 persons who stayed with the Bhatiyas for 10 days, from June 14 onwards. They came here for the engagement ceremony of Priyanka on June 16. It was only after their return that Lalit started the 'mass ritual' from June 24. Read | Beyond Burari deaths, occult practices are still a killer in India "Those relatives can reveal what they felt while staying with the Bhatias, especially with Lalit, for 10 days. They could have noticed some alarming trend in the house or at least the daily routine of the family members," the official said. Crime branch team found a June 27 CCTV footage of Lalit holding a poly bag in his hands. The bag seems to contain some clothes and a doctor's tape. Police have claimed that these items were used to tie the hand and mouths of the 11 members before the hangings. Another video grab from June 28 captures Lalit walking out of the house in the evening. He returns holding a polybag containing havan items. Read | Police detain female occult practitioner linked to Burari family Watch | CCTV footage shows what happened moments before 11 Burari deaths<doc-sep>
Family members who were found hanging inside their house on June 1. (File Photo) With new details tumbling out of the closet in the shocking Burari mass suicide case, the Delhi Police has now decided to conduct the psychological autopsy to ascertain the psyche of all the 11 members of a family who were found hanging inside their house under mysterious circumstances last week. This is not for the first time that Delhi Police has opted for a psychological study of the deceased to solve a death case. The police have earlier conducted similar test in Sunanda Pushkar murder case. Psychological autopsy refers to mapping the psyche of the living family members and the mental health of the deceased. Police are still awaiting the final postmortem report and the forensic report. They will also be sending the viscera of the bodies for forensic examination to ascertain whether the members were poisoned. The initial autopsy report had said that all 11 members had died of hanging and there were no signs of struggle or scuffle. The baffling mass suicide case Ten of the 11 members of the deceased family were found hanging from an iron-mesh in the ceiling on Sunday (June 1), while the body of 77-year-old Narayan Devi, the head of the family, was lying on the floor in another room of the house. Devi's daughter Pratibha (57), her two sons Bhavnesh (50) and Lalit (45) were also among the deceased. Bhavnesh's wife Savita (48) and their three children - Maneka (23), Neetu (25), and Dhirendra, aged 15, too were found dead. Burari deaths: CCTV footage shows how family members carried stools inside house before 'mass suicide' Lalit Bhatia's wife Tina (42) and their 15-year-old son Dushyant were also among those found dead. Pratibha's daughter Priyanka, who was engaged last month and would have married by the end of this year, was also found hanging. Image Source : PTI Delhi Police had earlier conducted psychological autopsy in the Sunanda Pushkar murder case. Suicide to attain moksha? On Wednesday, police had recovered CCTV footage that showed some members bringing stools and wires that were used for their hanging. They had also found 11 diaries which had 'psychological musings' and things about attaining 'road to God'. Reports suggest that Lalit Bhatia had been claiming that his dead father has been 'visiting' him. The family maintained several registers/diaries which purportedly contained 'directions' from Lalit's father who died a few years ago. Entries in these diaries suggest that the family may have performed the mass suicide 'ritual' to attain 'moksha' 'nirvana' after being influenced by Lalit. What is Psychological Autopsy In suicide cases, the law enforcing agencies do consider psychological autopsy as the most effective tool for gathering information about the mental state of the person before his death. The psychological autopsy helps the agencies to get an answer as why a person has committed suicide by checking medical records, talking to friends and family, and analysing a person's state of mind prior to his/her death. Here are the main reasons why a psychological autopsy might be conducted: 1. The main objective is to establish definitively that the person did die as the result of a suicide. 2. The psychological autopsy helps in gathering data for the purposes of suicide prevention or to better understand suicidal behavior. 3. The autopsy might be conducted in order to determine whether or not clinicians or practitioners are in any way at fault. WATCH: How Delhi Police plans to crack Burari mass suicide case with psychological autopsy (With inputs from PTI) Latest India News