Yellow. Orange. Pink. Beige. Yards of drapes descended from the iron mesh ceiling of the hallway, like an elaborate stage setting. From every loop dangled a human body, a choreo­graphy of puppets on strings. The nation watched in horror and stunned disbelief, as 11 members of a very normal family in a very normal neighbourhood of north Delhi committed mass suicide, for little-understood reasons, on July 1.

Weeks later, there is an increasing sense that the story of the Burari family could be the story of many families in India. The Burari tragedy has been followed by a raft of similar cases across the country, the latest being the death of six members of a family on July 14 in Jharkhand's Hazaribagh, unable to cope with the terminal illness of the only breadwinner of the family and the consequent burden of debt. Police files show, even before Burari, at least 10 such tragedies have occurred this year. Are suicides by family members, with premeditation and in cooperation, gaining ground?

TRAGEDY WITH NO NAME

Until July 1, few Indians in fact, few Delhiites had ever heard of Burari, a northern constituency of the National Capital Territory. In the earliest hours of that morning, a Sunday, not a soul heard the noise of human drama between illusion and reality, madness and sanity that snuffed out the lives of seven women, two men and two minors of the Chundawat-Bhatia family: Narayani Devi (77), her two sons Bhavnesh (50) and Lalit (45), daughter Pratibha (57), daughters-in-law Savita (48) and Teena (42) and grandchildren Priyanka (33), Nitu (25), Monu (23), Dhruv (15) and Shivam (15).

Was it murder, suicide or something else? If every murder has a motive and every suicide a secret grievance, real or imaginary, the Burari deaths appear motiveless, especially to the relatives of the deceased. From June 11, the Bhatia-Chundawat household had been jam-packed. The family was gearing up for Priyanka's upcoming wedding, the first among the grandchildren, renovating their home and hosting guests for the engagement on June 17. The children were already in touch over a WhatsApp group, discussing the food, the trousseau, the hairstyles and more. The day before, the family visited temples and in the evening they played music and danced late into the night. The last of the guests left on June 23. They were financially sound and happy. A wedding was coming up. We can't believe that they committed suicide, says Pravin Nagpal, son-in-law of Devi and a businessman in Panipat. To the extended family, the Burari incident could not be anything but murder.

But the autopsy reports are now out. According to the board of doctors, they all died of ante-mortem injuries, indicating death due to suicide, says Alok Kumar, joint commissioner of police (crime). Although the police had registered a murder case, the investigation found no signs of strangulation, scuffle or injury. Footage from four CCTVs in the area show no outsider entering the house that night. Rs 1.5 lakh, along with gold jewellery, lay untouched in the family cupboard. According to doctors, most of them died of partial hanging, where the body does not hang free but touches the ground, typical of suicide. CCTV grabs, too, show two women of the family bringing in stools on June 28, confirmed by Saini Furniture House in nearby Sant Nagar market, and two boys bringing up wires from their plywood shop, all in preparation.

Although no suicide note was found, the body status were found exactly as described in the final entries of the diary, June 2628, says Kumar: nine people to hang from iron mesh ceiling of the hallway, daughter Pratibha from the window near the home temple and the grandmother in her bedroom. The diaries mention 1 am as the time for the final act. The autopsy confirms that. Although it was earlier suspected that the grandmother had died of strangulation, forensic experts have now announced that she, too, died of partial hanging. A belt was found on the handle of an almirah near her body. She was possibly the last to die.

What if a family member had drug­ged or poisoned the others, then hanged them? Homicide by hanging is extre­mely rare, says Kumar. Unless the victim is an infant or incapacitated, or unless there are several assailants, it is difficult to accomplish. There is no sign of drugs or poison in the house or in the bodies. We are waiting for the viscera report to confirm that, he says. The easiest in that case would have been putting poison or drugs in the food, but that night they did not cook. The kitchen is totally clean. They called for 20 rotis from a nearby shop instead.

Sharing Death in Common

The idea might seem macabre in a modern context, but sharing death in common has deep cultural roots. In ancient India, dying together often had sacrificial motives, to save or benefit others, or for honour. Great love stories often end with lovers dying together. Great friendship stories similarly, wri­tes Ruth Vanita, scholar of South Asian studies in Loves Rites. In modern times, a family suicide is defined as an act of ending life involving more than one person in a family, where at least one person drives the impulse for suicide.

Family suicides started emerging as a new trend from the late 90s, says Dr Praveenlal Kuttichira, professor of psychiatry and principal of Jubilee Mission Medical College & Research Institute in Thrissur, Kerala. The incidents were so rare we decided to study them, in order to develop an intervention programme, he says. From 1998, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) started documenting such deaths in its annual Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India series, with 336 such deaths that year. Over the years, family suicide has crystallised as a category, accounting for 2.5 per cent of the suicides in the country, though a large number of states and UTs don't furnish details. And no data has been published since 2016.

The ghost who speaks

The Burari case is a good example of collective psychosis in a family. Lalit will show a small stick. Then all of you will cover your mouth with a wet cloth or doctor ki patti, reads the last entry in the Burari diaries, on June 28. Going by it, Lalit Singh Chunda­wat, 45, the youngest son of Narayani Devi, coordinated every movement of death. Set all air coolers and fans whirring, get bigger stools with room to tie your feet, don't allow anyone home, sip water, think positive, utter the divine name, tie your own hands indivi­dually and willingly, act with conviction and unity. Ghabrao mat (don't panic), he said as he urged them to take the final leap of faith towards death with him.

Lalit seems to have convinced his family that he was in fact transmitting the spirit voice of his father, the late Bhopal Singh. No one knows exactly when Bhopal Singh died, perhaps sometime in 2007, but according to the police, Lalit took it upon himself to discipline the family after his death. He would make them pray together three times a day and stand in line every morning, to enhance mental strength. It is also not clear when Lalit started talking about his communion with his father's spirit, though the Chundawats started writing down his extraordinary trance-like pronouncements, Road to God, from July 8, 2007. Over the years, the diaries talk increasingly about unrealised, wandering souls (atripta atmas), not just of his father but of four more relatives, who wanted the family to perform certain rites so that they could be set free.

Secret life of a family

The Chundawat family was well-liked in the neighbourhood. No one had ever heard them fight, yell or offend anyone, says Vimla Soni, owner of a dyeing store. They were polite and hard-working, says Amrik Singh, who lives across the lane. Lalit ran a plywood shop below the house, next to his brother Bhavnesh's grocery store. A reserved man, the nei­gh­bours did not see him every day, but he was known to be kind. Among the last people to speak to him was a local handyman asking for a loan, says a senior pol­ice officer. Curiously, none of the neighbours had ever been inside the Chundawat home.

A typical enmeshed family, says Dr Rajat Mitra, clinical psychologist and director at the Swanchetan Society for Mental Health in Delhi. Enmeshment is a psychological term to describe closeness between people, typically family members, leading to lack of autonomy and dysfunction, and limited social interaction. And it is not unusual for secrets to take hold in such families: to create boundaries, to escape scrutiny and perhaps to protect a member. By all accounts, Lalit had a special position in the Chundawat home. They never thought of seeking psychiatric help. Or perhaps they did not wish to face the truth?

The sad truth

In Indian families, mental illness hides in plain sight. The National Mental Health Survey, 2016, conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS), estimates that 13.7 per cent of Indians above age 18 need active treatment, compared to just three per cent in 1990. And the rise in mental illness is changing the dynamics behind family suicides, say forensic scientists.

In the West, the presence of psychiatric syndromes in suicides has been talked about. Indian doctors cited adjustment disorders as the most common cause of family suicides. Such cases were invariably seen in families where poverty, insecurity and hopelessness affected mental health, says Kutti­chira. Illness of a member or marriage-related issues were other principal causes. But that trend has shifted towards psychological issues, he explains. The Burari deaths are a clear case of a family suicide associated with mental illness, experts say.

CLASSIC SIGNS OF PSYCHOSIS

To psychiatrists, Lalit exhibited typical symptoms of psychotic disorder. Here was a man who was mentally unwell, who required and deserved treatment, says psychiatrist Dr Nimesh Desai, chief of the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences in Delhi. In psychosis, a person loses touch with reality. Typical symptoms can be hallucinations, hearing, seeing or smelling things not there. Or delusions: thinking one has special abilities or that people are after them.

Psychosis can stem from trauma such as bereavement, mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, organic brain disorders or genetic irregularity. Though no documents on his mental health have been found, Lalit was known to be very close to his father. He also had history of traumatic injury from a near-fatal accident. Long-time nei­ghbours say huge slabs of plywood had fallen on him at a shop he used to work in; some relatives say he was attacked by ruffians and left to die in a plywood shop. No one recalls the extent of his injury, but say he was hospitalised for weeks and could not speak for three years. Could that have affected him? Its hard to say without the medical records, says Dr S.S. Kale, chief of neurosurgery at AIIMS, but we do see a lot of road accident and assault patients with head and neck injuries losing their voice. The initiation of speech is in the brain and post-traumatic stress injuries often cause hallucinations or delusions.

MADNESS BY CONTAGION

How did Lalit convince the other members of his family? Kumar says the VIMHANS psychiatrists whom the crime branch consulted hold that the family was suffering from Shared Psychotic Disorder (SPD). A rare phenomenon in clinical settings, delusions are transferred from one person to another, or others in close association. Typically, the person initially developing the delusion is the more dominant member of the family, says Desai. Lalit, because of his imagined links with the late patriarch of the family, is likely to have played that role. The dominant personality, in turn, influences the weaker, less intelligent or more suggestible members, explains Mitra, who then either succumb under pressure, accept, support and share his delusional beliefs. It is possible that Lalit influenced one or two members of the family, who in turn convinced the others over time, until everyone ended up sharing a belief system, he adds. Two names Lalit would invoke were of two deceased relatives,his wife Tina's father and his niece Priyanka's father. A crime branch team found that Tina had approached her parental family, offering to perform rites for them. And since 2008 Priyanka was the main scribe recording Lalit's other-worldly musings.

How did Lalit deal with the doubters? His sister Sujata Nagpal's family did not believe him. Sujata's husband, Pravin, a businessman in Panipat, recalls rubbish­ing Lalit's claims. The conversation went underground, as the Chundawat family, probably under Lalit's directions, decided to guard its secret. Even in her frequent conversations with her mother, Sujata did not hear enough to get suspicious. Brother Dinesh in Kota or his family, also had no clue. The doubters he could not avoid, Lalit probably browbeat into submission. His brother Bhavnesh, for instance. The notes show that Lalit censured the family for not trusting him (Copy ki baat suno) and blamed someone in the family for their doubts. The June 26 entry mentions it was a testing time for Bhavnesh.

THE FRAGILE FAMILY

Medications, usually antipsychotics, apart from psychotherapy and counselling, could have saved the entire family, says Desai. The point is to sensitise everybody, from the neighbourhood watchdogs to social workers to beat constables about signs of families being at risk, says Kuttichira. Mitra blames the law, saying unlike in the UK or US, our laws do not allow anyone, be it the police or mental health workers, to rescue people, unless they seek help. In the course of my work with the Delhi police, he says, I have come across families that live in barricaded confinement, out of unresolved and untreated psychological issues. The Burari deaths are a warning to Indian society that such illnesses need to be heeded to avoid more such self-inflicted tragedies.