Barely 22 days after 11 members of the Bhatia family were found dead at their residence in North Delhi's Burari, their pet dog, Tommy, died of cardiac arrest on Sunday evening.

Tommy, was tied on the terrace of the house from the same grill from which his family was found hanging. When he was rescued, the pet dog was found to be suffering from fever with a temperature of 108 Fahrenheit and was extremely aggressive.

He had to be muzzled before being taken to a foster home in an ambulance.

"He was depressed and had anxiety. He knew something had gone amiss with his family. On Sunday evening at about 7 pm, he suffered a cardiac arrest," said Sanjay Mohapatra, founder of House of Stray Animals (HSA) and an animal rights activist.

After being rescued, Mohapatra and his team worked relentlessly on Tommy's health and he almost completely recovered from physical problems. But Mohapatra says, Tommy never recovered from the shock of losing his family.

"Whenever my staff took him out for a walk, he always kept looking at faces of each passerby and tried to sniff them in search of his family. He had made a remarkable progress but the damage he faced was irreversible," said Mohapatra.

During his treatment, Mohapatra and his team had managed to control Tommy's aggression and when the reporter had visited him a couple of weeks back, he was found standing and walking among complete strangers without a muzzle on his mouth.

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