india

Updated: Jul 31, 2018 16:56 IST

In a case that brought back the horror of 11 deaths in Delhi’s Burari, seven members of a family were found dead in Ranchi’s Arsande area.

In Delhi’s Burari, 11 members of a family were found dead in what is believed to be a ritual gone wrong.

The dead in the Ranchi house were identified as Shashi Kumar Jha, 65, a retired railway employee, his wife Gayatri Devi, 60, along with their sons Deepak Jha, 40, and Rupesh Jha, 39.

Deepak’s wife Soni Jha, 38, and their children one-year-old son Jagu and six-year-old daughter Drishti were also found dead. Rupesh was unmarried.

The body of one of the two sons was found hanging from the ceiling along with five other bodies draped in a blanket on two joint mattresses in one room. The second son was found hanging near the bed in the adjacent room. Police said two upturned wooden stools were also found in the rooms.

“Prima facie, investigations reveal that it seems the brothers had hanged themselves after killing the other five family members. Other angles are also being investigated,” he added.

The family was undergoing a financial crisis and had to spend heavily on the medical expenditure for treatment of Jagu, a neighbour said on the condition of anonymity.

“They had also taken a loan of around Rs 20 lakh. As a result, Deepak’s father often used to speak about their financial crisis,” he added.

“The bodies are being sent for postmortem. The exact cause of their death would be clear only after the autopsy,” Ranchi’s senior superintendent of police Anish Gupta said.

The family had moved into the house, in which they occupied four rooms, in January this year.

Deputy inspector general of police (Ranchi Range) Amol V Homkar said two suicide notes, one of 15 pages and the second of two pages, were found from the spot. He refused to share the details of the notes.

The bodies were found after the child of another tenant on the same floor entered the house, which was unlocked, to call Drishti, whose school van had come at around 8:45am.

Neighbours said Deepak was employed as a marketing representative in a pharmaceutical company and Rupesh was working for online companies from home.

The incident comes a fortnight after six members of a well-to-do business family in the state’s Hazaribagh allegedly committed suicide. Members of the extended family and friends, however, alleged they were murdered and demanded a high-level probe.