RedHanded - Episode 266 - The Burari Deaths: Ritual Slaughter

Episode Date: September 22, 2022

In the early morning of 1 July 2018, Gurcharan Singh went to check on his neighbours in the Burari district of Delhi. When he got there, he found a crime scene so chilling that the whole city was thrown into a frenzy.  Ten members of the Chundawat family were hanging from the ceiling. Another, the 80-year-old grandmother, was found strangled in the next room. And the police, the public, and the national media were stumped – it seemed too complex for suicide; too organised for murder. And then, they discovered a diary that changed everything… In the first case in five years of RedHanded to cause Suruthi to sleep with the lights on, we delve into the murky, ritualistic details of the Burari deaths.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. I sat in front of that mic for a second. I was like, what am I doing? What am I meant to say? It's happened. It's happened. I've lost my mind. Yes, we are getting increasingly older. I'm getting so forgetful now. I put my keys down four times this morning and couldn't remember where they were. It's happened. In my building, I have to open my post with a key,

and I leave my key in the post box three times a week. Do you know what? It happens to the best of us. So it's fine. We'll get you a little panic. I need to get one of those air tags for my keys. That's what I need to do. Also one of those. Yes. And one for me that you can have. I'll just have to wear a pendant around my neck. Welcome. You don't need to know about all of our aching bodies and forgetful brains. Forget that bit. Do need to know. Yes.

About buying tour tickets. Because if you've forgotten about that, maybe it's because you're getting old. Exactly. But the nothing will keep you young. Like our Confessions Tour, which is next month, October 2022. We are playing the London Palladium. We have shows in Edinburgh, Manchester, Dublin, Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo and Berlin. There are still tickets for every city.

Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin will be going any fucking minute. So make sure you get in there as soon as you can. And we can't wait. We're working on the show right now. We actually had a little filmy secret sesh last night about it. We did indeed. And if you follow us on social media, which if you don't already, wrist slaps all round, come follow us on there because we are going to be dropping hints all week this week as

to what case we have chosen for our live show. And believe me, you will not be disappointed. The memes are there. The fucking drinks need to be had. So come follow us on social media, check it out, and get your tickets for the live show. Don't get your tickets from random ticket websites. Go to redhandedpodcast.com and get your tickets there. Now, speaking of cases that are completely insane, let's segue inelegantly into today's show.

Not your best work, but I'll let you have it. What's the line between faith and illusion? This is the question that sits at the heart of today's case. A case that's like no other, with a crime scene like one we have never come across before. And it's also the first case in five years to give me nightmares and force me on the day that I saw a video of said crime scene to sleep with the lights on. Yeah, she made me look at it too.

Yeah, I did. I was like, I did say, do you want to see it? But then I was like, please do watch it because I have seen it and I need somebody else to experience the horror with me. More on that later. For now, it was the morning of the 1st of July 2018. And it started like any other in the Burari district of Delhi, India. It was around 7am when people heard the milkman honking his horn on the street. And the residents of San Nagar headed down to buy their milk. As the street began to churn with the hustle and bustle of Delhi life, the locals noticed

that one of their go-to convenience shops was shut. It was very unusual, but luckily many of them knew the family who owned the place, the Chandravats. So, one of the neighbours called the family, but there was no reply. Again, this was really not like them. So, one of the neighbours called the family, but there was no reply. Again, this was really not like them. So, since they lived just a few doors down, this neighbour decided to pay them a visit, just to make sure everything was okay. When he knocked on the door, again there was no reply. He then noticed the door wasn't actually locked, and it swung open with a slight push.

Now, even more worried, the neighbour headed into the house. And as he walked up the stairs and onto the first floor, he saw a scene beyond anyone's wildest imagination. He ran. At 7.35am, a call was placed to the Barari police station, and soon after, authorities arrived to absolute chaos. In the time since the scene had been discovered, news had spread around the local area and hundreds of people had gathered outside the house. Countless people had even already gone up into the house and trampled all over the potential evidence. And someone had shot a video of the entire scene

and shared it on social media. About the video, we're going to talk about what's in the video and how horrendous it is in a sec but i also want to uh say that having gone to india like every single summer until i was like in my early 20s what i will say is there is very little that is censored that they play on the news they will just show horrendous crime scenes unblurred unredacted just play them so people there have a higher tolerance for fucked up shit like the video that's being shared i'm not saying they weren't absolutely horrified by it because they were but the sharing of it i am not surprised at all that it went viral and i'm

not saying that's unique to that country i'm sure if that happened here, people would also share it because it's like a viral freak show kind of thing. But people are definitely less sensitized to that kind of thing, I think, because of the way in which the news conducts itself there. This video is out there. You can find it pretty easily. But if you watch it, don't tell them we sent you and you definitely will not sleep tonight. But you will understand why people were descending into a state of frenzied fear.

There's a three-part Netflix documentary on this case. It's called House of Secrets, The Berari Deaths, which we would recommend. But that's not where you're going to find the video. The documentary doesn't show it, which I understand it would be very difficult to get that past any sort of censorship board. But it is easy to find if you want to see it. I watch her redditry to go to sleep

and it isn't gone, do you know what I mean? Like it's still like in my head forever. Yeah, I don't think that what I saw in that video will ever leave my brain. So, you've been warned. What had become of the 11 members of the Chandabhat family was totally fucking unbelievable. Because 10 of them were found hanging from nooses made of wire and brightly coloured saris. The saris had been tied to a metal grill that sat over a skylight in the living room. Nine of them were tied to that,

and one female victim was hanging alone in a corner of the room. All of the victims had been blindfolded, gagged, and their hands and feet had been bound with rope. In an adjoining room, an old woman was found. She too had a noose made of a sari around her neck. But she had been found on the floor next to her bed, and in place of a wire, a belt hung from a nearby wardrobe handle, and it seemed that this is where the older lady had been suspended from.

The victim's ages ranged from just 15 to 80 years old. And if you do decide to not listen to us and watch the footage, you can see all of the things that Saru just described, and it is chilling. It's quite difficult to describe, but it's just bodies hanging and it's so surreal and unsettling and it's not an enormous room. Like they're shoulder to shoulder basically. And it looks like, I don't know,

like some sort of ghost house, haunted house. And you're watching these bodies like slowly move because they're swinging because they're suspended by saris and you're really just waiting for one of them to move yeah i think that's the part that's so chilling i think it's something really really unsettling about the fact that they're hanging if they found 11 bodies on the floor of course that's horrific but it wouldn't have the same impact that the hanging does and i think it's also the kind of juxtaposition of the dead bodies but they're like brightly colored saris that are

like tied up around their necks and i think it's not a huge room but i think if you think of 10 people 10 people standing in a room is a lot i think when they are tied up and suspended like that they take up this space that just, and because they're all tied to this one metal grill, it's very concentrated in one part of the room, apart from this one lady who's in the corner. It is just like nothing I've ever seen before in my entire life. So because there are 11 people hanging up, there are obviously a lot of names in today's episode, but we trust you to listen carefully and keep

up. And we will post a family tree on our social media, which will help you follow. But until that day, I was going to say here's the shorthand, here's the opposite of the shorthand, here is the family tree, as narrated by Saruti Bala. So the old lady found in the bedroom

was 80-year-old Naranya Devi. She was the matriarch of the family. Everyone else found hanging from the ceiling in the living room were as follows. There were her sons, Bhavesh, who was 50, and Lalit, who was 45. Their wives, Savitha, who was 48,

and Tina, who was 42. Bhavesh and Savitha's kids were also in the room. Neethu 25, Monu 23 and Dhruv who was 15. Among the dead was also Lalit and Tina's son Sivam who was just 15. Then you had Narayana Devi so that's the the matriarch, her daughter. So this is Bhaveshan Lalit's sister. And her name was Pratipa, and she was 51. Pratipa was in fact the woman whose body was found hanging in the corner of the living room while the rest of them were tied to the metal grill on the ceiling. And the final family member also found dead that day was Pratipa's daughter, 33-year-old Priyanka. So yes, 11 people, that's three generations of one family, completely wiped out, in one night, in one house. But what we have to all get into our heads right now before we go any further

is that before this incident, the Chandabats were regarded as an extremely normal family. While this whole setup of three generations living together in one house might sound crazy here in the West, it is perfectly ordinary in India. And the family really did seem so, so standard in every possible way. They were middle class, well-educated, well-adjusted. They ran three shops and had a plywood business and generally just got on with everyone. Neighbours would leave their kids with them when they went out of town and all of their employees had nothing but great things to say about them. If anyone ever forgot their lunch, the women of the family would feed them.

And when, in 2016, there was a demonetisation crisis in India that led to a huge run on the banks, Lalit stood in line for hours until 3am to get enough cash out to make sure every one of his employees were paid. And then once, a factory worker broke his leg at work, and the family moved him into their house so they could look after him themselves. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately

wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have

consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. No one ever heard so much as a raised voice coming from the Chandabat house. And they were known to be very pious, generous, kind people who made sure to visit the temple twice a day, which is not particularly unusual with certain people in India.

They were a close-knit, happy family. Just ten days before they were all found dead, the Chandavats had celebrated 33-year-old Priyanka's engagement. And chillingly, home videos from that party show them dancing in the exact spot that less than two weeks later, they would all be found hanging. But getting back to the investigation, the police were having an absolute nightmare.

The streets of Delhi were going nuts. Everyone had seen the video and people wanted answers. But the police didn't have any to give. And this again is, I think, very indicative of the culture there. There have been lots of incidents where the police have lied about cases, where they have just said, oh, that person died, but they jumped to their death. And then later they'll find out there was no blood there. So it's like that person was murdered and then thrown off a building.

And then they just said, like, lots and there was no blood there. So it's like that person was murdered and then thrown off a building. And then they just said like lots and lots of cover ups. The people there don't trust the police in large proportions. There is a lot of corruption. There's a lot of like underhandedness. And so I think that when this case happened and when everybody saw the video footage that had been shot by this anonymous person and it spread like crazy I think everybody was like you won't get away with just hijacking this case and making it seem like something it wasn't and also I think people were fucking terrified because they were a middle-class family but what I would say is like

they're in Delhi being middle-class it's like they were still living in a very very urbanized like very very concentrated densely populated part of the city. Back to back houses, flats, apartments. So I think this idea was because their hands and their feet were bound and they had tape over their eyes and their mouth, everyone was like, it has to be murder. And if somebody can go into a house and murder 11 people in which there are adults in there two adult men were in there then this could happen to anybody yeah and so i think i can't like state the level of panic and the level of chaos the police at the time were worried that it was going to turn into full-scale riots because people were just freaking out and it was worse because the police had no answers. And I think that was the key thing.

I think it was absolutely the police corruption, the fear that they were going to cover stuff up is there, but I think it's the fact that none of this case made any sense. For example, if it was murder, who would want to kill this ordinary family? It's not like they had links to the criminal underworld or something like that. Like a rival plywood manufacturer.

Exactly. There was none of that. And I think it's like anywhere, they would have known, oh, these people were, they were up to no good. Somebody's knocked off their family. It's not great, but we're fine. This was a normal, upstanding family. So there was no clear motive for anybody. There was also no obvious sign of, say, burglary.

The women in the house when they were found dead were all still wearing their jewellery. And also, like you said, Priyanka's wedding was upcoming. They just had the engagement. There was a lot of stuff for her wedding in the house, like a lot of jewellery, trinkets, a lot of gold, let's just say. And all of that was still there. So if that kind of very obvious nefarious motive is already ruled out, it's like upping the panic even more. So no motive.

Let's talk about the means. I think this was another problem for people. How could, say, one or two people have killed 11 people? And it's not like 11 kids or like 11 old ladies. No. There were fit enough men in there. Exactly.

To have put up a bit of a fight. Exactly. And if there were more killers, therefore, involved, how many people are we talking would need to be involved to kill 11 people? You'd need like a fucking gang of them. And if we say it was a gang of people, while this makes more logistical sense

for mass murder it makes it even more confusing how the neighbors didn't notice anything that night because again when you watch the documentary you can see how densely populated this area is the neighbors can like literally see into the house how could a gang come and gone and murdered 11 people without being seen and also there was absolutely no sign of forced entry or any sort of struggle in the house whatsoever. So how could a potential gang of people got in, murdered 11 people and then left all so immaculately? All right, so that's the murder side of things. So let's look at suicide. If it was suicide, that doesn't really make any sense either.

Because why would 11 people, including children, kill themselves? And even if we decided that they would, why would they do it like this? Poison would have been so much easier and a lot less manual. And if it was suicide, why were their hands and feet bound? And why were their eyes and mouths taped shut? I think one of the most haunting things about the video is that they kind of look like they're wearing masks. There's so much stuff on their face. And the wire as well being wound around them, as well as the saris around their necks, it all just seems very odd. That's the thing.

It's like, it seems like such overkill with the wire around the saris if it's suicide. I don't know. Maybe you just want to if it's suicide. I don't know. Maybe you just want to make really short. But I don't know. Neither of these options made sense. And, you know, many people listening to this might also think mass suicide of an entire family of 11 people. Without a survivor. Without a single survivor.

Because I feel like when you think about mass suicides in a cult setting. Exactly. It's the, like like benevolent leader telling everyone to do it and they're either they either make a break for it and don't kill themselves at all or they kill themselves completely differently and right at the end that feels much more familiar for us in a cult setting but in a domestic familial case like this maybe you're thinking like family annihilation or something but suicide like I can understand why people will be like how could this have happened it seems completely illogical

well again in India I would say mass suicide of an entire family is not totally unheard of but I would say that the method of suicide if it was a suicide feels pretty unbelievable because there are easier ways to do it and typically when you see this kind of mass suicide everyone just drinks poison but I would say that while the method seems odd the action itself not so much I think culturally shame and pride are big motivators for Indians and if something had happened if there was like a secret that they felt was so potentially catastrophic that their entire standing in society,

because like we said, they were a very respected, middle-class, business-owning family who were well-regarded, if they thought that entire standing that they had was about to be obliterated, I could see that happening. But extended family members of the Chandravats who had visited Delhi for Priyanka's engagement also said that they had stayed with the family for over a week and every single one of the 11 now deceased had seemed totally normal. There wasn't really a hair out of place. In fact,

they'd spent 400,000 rupees on the engagement. Why would you do that if you're planning to kill yourself right afterwards? Because the bride's in there too. It's not like she's living her best life getting married. She's also hanging from a grid. And then look at Tina and Savita's brothers also told the police that their sisters had called them on the night of the incident, saying that they were all fine and they call again for a proper chat the next day so yeah i think those things definitely fly in the face of the suicide argument like why would you spend that much money on an engagement two weeks before and when you watch the home videos of them at the engagement it's not like you can see anything that's like bubbling beneath the surface they

look genuinely happy like priyanka looks ecstatic. The whole family's dancing. Like, it looks joyous. And that's a lot of money to be spending. And the fact that the two sister-in-laws call their brothers and are like, we'll call you tomorrow. Nobody saw anything. I just find that very hard to understand. And so did the police. They were completely stumped and had absolutely nothing to go on. And tensions kept growing amongst the public. But as we said, this sort of felt like it could have happened to anyone. The families of the victims were furious at any suggestion

that this could have been a suicide. They said that the police just didn't want to investigate. I also think the kind of intentionality of the deaths, because when you look at the way the saris were tied to that metal grid, they were spaced out evenly and like tied as if with purpose. It just seems so cold and calculated that, A, in a murder, it's like how are you controlling 11 people to stage a scene like that? But if it's a suicide, I don't know,

I guess you are anticipating that it be more frantic or like passion-driven rather than as cold and methodical as the scene seemed to present. But I do have to say that I do think the police weren't shirking their duties with this case. I think they really were trying to figure out what had happened. But as the protest grew, it seemed like more unrest would erupt. And so the case was handed over to the crime branch. So essentially, it was taken away from the local cops and handed

to a national team of investigators, like the FBI swooping in and pissing off the local sheriff, which happens in quite literally every crime drama ever. The hope was that the post-mortems would reveal vital information to help close the case. And while what they found was interesting, it's not quite what you would call definitive. The post-mortems revealed that none, not a single one of the family members had poison in their systems. They had all eaten some

plain rotis shortly before they died, but certainly nothing that would have incapacitated them. And I think that was one of the like shocking turning points when I was looking into this case, because for me, I was like, okay, maybe it's suicide. And if we're saying that Priyanka's engagement happened 10 days to two weeks before and then they killed themselves and they seemed happy then i was like something's come out priyanka's done something she's got a secret boyfriend she's pregnant or something's happened that has like blown their world apart and they're all going to kill themselves even that i found like that's crazy because yeah to kill the kids as well, that seems like very extreme.

Not saying impossible, but very extreme. Usually the mum or dad would be like, I failed catastrophically. I'm just going to kill myself. But I thought that's the possibility. Then I thought maybe poison. And then they were just staged like that. But the autopsies find nothing, nothing in their systems. And the team found something else pretty interesting.

50-year-old Bupesh had actually tried to free himself, as he had hanged, as had 15-year-old Sivam, Lalit and Tina's son. Narayan Devi, their grandmother, found dead in the bedroom, also displayed signs, more indicative of having been strangled with a belt tied to the wardrobe rather than having been hanged. There was no V-shaped mark around her neck,

but rather a one-sided bruise to her neck. She also had bruises on her body, as if she had been struggling and someone had been trying to control her. And I think the V-shaped bruising versus the one-sided bruising is what makes it seem like it was strangulation rather than a sudden drop. And also we know that she didn't really have a huge drop because whoever had done this, whether she had done it willingly or whether somebody had staged this, she is older, she's not as mobile,

and she was larger. It would have been harder to sort of get her up to the ceiling. So I think that they just had the belt tied to like a wardrobe. So it's like they were trying to get her to hang from that. But when they couldn't, I think they just choked her. Because marking to just one side feels like someone just pulling it. You don't fall on the side of your neck if you fall. You're going to drop down.

So the bodies hadn't really delivered on the answers front. So investigators had to refocus their efforts on the scene of the crime itself. And slowly, all of the theories that I've put forward as to what I thought was going on, or everything probably that you guys thought was going on, didn't really show up, because slowly, piece by piece, an extremely bizarre picture

began to fall into place. Firstly, detectives discovered CCTV cameras outside the Chandovat's house. They gave them a perfect view of their shops, their plywood business and their home. Authorities scoured through the footage to see if any intruders had secretly entered the house on the night of the incident. But all they could see were the comings and goings of the family members themselves. No one else came in or out. Then the police noticed something odd. At the scene of the crime, there had been like stools scattered around the

living room where the family had been found. And I mean stools to sit on, not stools as in faeces. And on the CCTV footage, police could see that two days before the incident, on the 28th of June 2018, Tina and her son Sivam had come home

with four brand new stools. On the night of the deaths deaths at 9.40pm, Tina and Neetu could also be seen coming home with yet more stools. And finally, before all went quiet that night, the night of the incident, the tape from the CCTV showed 15 showed 15 year old sivum coming out of the family's shop with a ball of wire and heading into the house and he's a struggler yeah and they also discovered um when they sort of took the saris and did some investigating that they had come from a local

market i mean that i guess that suggests like whoever did this didn't bring the stuff with them. The stools, the wire, the saris, they were all in the house. So it flies in the face of like somebody who is so cold and calculated and if it was a murder, shows signs of extreme organisation, highly organised killer, but then comes completely unprepared to a crime scene and uses objects that are found in the house. That's very opportunistic and flies in the face of that

type of killer. So it's very confusing what you're seeing at this point. So what in the cinnamon toast fuck is going on? I don't have answers. But to try and understand, the investigators doubled down on searching the house. They picked through every single room and noticed that a ritual had been carried out the night before. There was a prayer vessel filled with ash. Very Hindu, very Hindu of them. Starting fires, left, right and centre, very Hindu. Burning things in your own house, very Hindu. In fact, when you build a new house, and I'm sure like people in like cities don't do this anymore, but when my grandparents built their new house, maybe a decade ago or whatever, I remember start a fire inside. Start a fire inside, get the holy men round, walk a cow into your house, and then take the milk, boil the milk, and then give it a really bit of milk. Which for a race of people who are definitely lactose intolerant,

just all sorts of confusing, really. But yeah, so burning things for prayer rituals, just classic Hindu shit. And we're not talking burning a candle or some incense. No. It's like a metal bowl with a stand. Okay. A pointy, rectangular. rectangular yeah that filled with ash because it's like what

you do is you put a lot of like coals in there you set it on fire and then you sprinkle some stuff and then it smokes everywhere and you use that as part of like your rituals when you're praying so someone had been doing this the night before which was the night of the incident. And when the detectives inspected the god room more carefully, they discovered a diary. And what was written in this diary changed everything. I do have to say, I agree with you that I don't think the police were deliberately shirking. I don't think they tried that hard either. This stuff is just in the house. This stuff is in the house. I think they were just like so freaked out by what they were witnessing. You know, I'm not making excuses for them. You

watch the documentary and they're just like, they're like standing on the bed with their shoes on. They're like touching everything. No one's wearing any forensic suits. Like it's, it's a chaos and it's nothing less than I would expect from the Indian police. But yeah, it's all there. But it's like, I guess, picking apart the lives of 11 people in one house and just like so much chaos. One of the things that really struck me was, again, the difference between bodies on the floor and bodies hanging. The forensics team were like, we had to like walk between the bodies to get through the room and it's like you can't just step over them like you can a body like a floor like you have to like maneuver your way between it's almost like you know in a butcher's cold room you've got the

hanging carcasses it's like trying to navigate your way around that just to pick up evidence. Also, just to clarify, a god room, more classic Hindu behaviour. You're Hindu and you're affluent, you should have an entire room that is filled with the gods. For the gods. For the gods. And you go in there to do your rituals and stuff like that. If you're not, you have an area of the house

that is dedicated to them. So the diary is, it kind of sets the ball rolling as it had never rolled before. The police actually found 11 diaries in total. These diaries dated from 2007 to 2018 with the last entry made just days

before the deaths. The tone of the diaries were instructional and severe, so they weren't being written for the person writing them. They were being written for someone else to read and follow instruction. It's like a list of rules, advice, guidance. Some of the notes were general and presumably for everyone in the family to adhere to, like, contaminating your bodies with meat will not allow you to prosper.

It is important that everyone now follows a vegetarian lifestyle not even chickens no none of that it's very typical of like um it's called like sanscriptization because higher castes in indian in hindu culture typically will be vegan or at the very least vegetarian because it's seen as like bad karma to be putting meat is fine yeah i mean typically mostly just vegetarian right and um putting that kind of thing into your body uh because it's yes bad vibes bad vibes something died so you could eat it bad vibes it's also now i think or not now for a very long time it's also been like a show of status, because it's like, I can afford not to. And also, it's a superiority thing. It's like, hey, look how virtuous I am, right? So it is very

much like baked into the Hindu religion, like all the Hindu culture, that kind of thinking. So absolutely not surprising that this diary is being like, you want to get ahead, be a vegetarian. So we have the more general entries, but some of the entries were very specific indeed, specific to individuals within the household even. So we've got some examples. Dhruv is using his phone too much. This must be corrected.

Another one. Bupesh, your drinking will lead to your downfall. You must move away from alcohol to lead a better life. Savita, that's Bupesh's wife, Another one, Ives. One of the CID investigators poured over every word of the writings. Agonising work, no doubt, because the book spanned over a decade. But on the last page, it always bloody is, isn't it? I know, I'm almost like, maybe you should have started that. The last page of the book, this poor guy has been pouring over decades of ramblings and he finally finds, on the last page, a bingo. The investigator read in horror detailed instructions describing exactly what had been found at the crime scene. This is when shit gets mad.

OK, the 11 hanging bodies, the 10 hanging bodies, plus the dead grandma, bad shit, bad vibes. But it's about to get so much more fucking crazy. Because I think as any theories that anybody had, like, oh, Priyanka was just pregnant, so everyone killed themselves. It is about to get nuts because we are about to take a sharp turn

into the world of ritualistic Hinduism. Yes. Love. Everyone ready? Heart eyes. Okay. Because as everyone who is Hindu, or Hindu adjacent,

or who is a lapsed Hindu, or who has been watching Indian Matchmaker, thanks to my many recommendations on Under the Duvet, will know. In the immortal words of one of the girls from Indian Matchmaker, whose name I can't remember, quote, it's a good thing we're Hindu because there's a puja for everything. And puja, I'm sure you've met a puja in your life all over you have puja means ritual so yeah i think that that girl from india matchmaker is absolutely right and it's a part of the big scam really because the reason she actually says that in india matchmaker is because they're talking about how they should look at their horoscopes so still to this day my very highly educated cousins etc whose mothers and fathers have like master's degrees in

physics and maths etc will still do things like when their kids are getting married check the horoscopes and you go to a little uh holy man and you take the horoscope take the exact time and date of birth of that child and they'll like draw up the horoscope charts and they'll say oh if these two get married her dad's gonna die when she's 40 and they'll be like fuck what do we do I've got so much to give and he'll be like that's all right just pay me this amount of money I'll do a puja everything's fine yeah and marry my son anything anything goes so for some people I think obviously they don't necessarily believe it now but a lot of people, I think obviously they don't necessarily believe it now, but a lot of people do. I think this is the other thing that you have to sort of

wrap your head around for the rest of this case is that India, while it is a very rapidly developing country, while people there are highly educated because education is seen as like your only route out of poverty and it works. it's it's like true social mobility vessel the religion runs deep it really does and i think that even people who it doesn't it doesn't seem to decrease with people's level of education i think that's the thing to say and people are very very pious and it is a very old religion that has a lot of crazy shit i actually um some of your hindu knowledge has finally rubbed off on me as i was watching tiktok as i do every day and there's this tiktoker who's quite reasonably famous she's english and is white very british and she was doing this like 10 things you might not know about me she was like i was raised hindu and i was like

no you weren't no you weren't she was like my parents were things you might not know about me. She was like, I was raised Hindu. And I was like, no, you weren't. She was like, my parents were hippies and they just sort of like did it like that. And I was like, it's not really the same. I mean, the thing is, it's like, if you want to take inspiration from various religions, go nuts, go fucking wild. Because I was probably brought up Hindu for the early stage of my life. I don't fucking know. But you can't convert, can you? No, you can't convert.

You can't officially convert into Hinduism. It's not one of those religions that wants you, doesn't want the numbers. They got the numbers. They want, and this is the fundamental basis of Hinduism, exclusivity and prestige and status. That's what it's about. Not everything's terrible. Yoga, meditation, like like sure um astral

projection but it's all scanning yeah and then the rest of it's like that's very issuous but anyway enough of that so yes coming back to the diary on that last page something that the writer had called a bad puja was outlined and I don't mean bad as in the opposite of good it's spelt b-a-d-h and this translates to banyan tree ritual. So anyone who doesn't know what a banyan tree is it's like an Asian weeping willow is the best way I can probably describe it it's an absolute huge tree with loads and loads of like hanging branches and tendrils and all sorts of stuff going on. If you've ever been to Asia, you've probably seen one.

Like I saw loads in the Philippines. In the Philippines, they think they're haunted. They think that they possess the souls of dead people. In India, they're very revered as part of like Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, etc. very revered as part of like hinduism jainism sikhism buddhism etc i didn't know until the research for this case actually that they are a type of strangling fig oh so there you go did you know that all figs to be figs have to completely envelop a wasp i did know which is why they're not vegan put the figs down vigo oh who knew now you. So no figs and honey for you. So yeah, they're a very beautiful tree and very, very highly symbolic.

For example, Gautama Buddha came to Nirvana sitting underneath a banyan tree. Enlightenment. Enlightenment. That's the word. Buddha came to enlightenment, sat underneath a banyan tree. And also, I text my mum. So I forced my mum to watch the documentary. Forced is a loose word because she fucking loves that shit. She watched it all. And I text her and I was like, please, can you finish watching it today? Because I need you to text me and tell me if you've ever heard of anything like this.

And she was like, of course, as soon as I get home from school. So she watched it and then she was like, what the hell? I've never ever heard anything like this in my entire life. Oh, wow. How did they manage it? That was the phrase. And then like an hour later, she'd clearly been thinking about it. And she said, oh, but we do tie the placentas of cows to bunion trees.

Super. So I'm telling you, there's a lot of, it's very pagan. It's very pagan. This is a very old religion and so yes they will do things like tie the placentas of cows for why to bring more cows various things i think banyan trees have a lot to do with fertility and like so women who want to have babies will go tie like little ribbons to the tendrils and like make prayers it's just it's got it all it's the tree of plenty it's grandmother willow it's grandmother willow with a fucking cow placenta tied to her i'm sure pocahontas was all over the cow placentas oh yeah so yeah it has a significant meaning in the religion as a symbol this tree

but the key thing you want to do is go and google it so you've got a picture in your mind of what this tree looks like because it is a tree that could be dramatically represented in a disturbing and horrific way possibly by 10 people hanging from the ceiling using long lengths of fabric and so the instructions for this bird puja were clearly outlined step by step in the diary. It said that the ritual was to be performed over seven consecutive days, finishing at 1am on the final day, which was in fact the 30th of June, the day the family died. And the book clearly explained what the family had to do that night. It was described in disturbing detail. It said, keep the lights dim, put your blindfolds on and your gags on, stand to attention and imagine the branches of a tree wrapping around you tightly. Your state of mind should be zero, thinking of nothing but infinity. Perform the

ritual with unity and determination and this will help you repent your sins. Perform the ritual with unity and determination, and this will help you repent your sins. Suddenly, the case had taken on a religious turn, and it was like pouring petrol straight onto an already out-of-control media firestorm. The story was on every news channel for weeks, and in the vacuum of any new salient information reporters started pulling together all sorts of crazy theories of their own the number 11 is a big obsession with this case because obviously 11 people had died but reporters and internet sleuths started to see 11 everywhere and one prime example was the pipes on the outside of the Chandabhat's house. There were 11 pipes in total, sticking randomly out of a wall.

Seven were facing down and four were pointing straight out. Seven women and four men had died in the house. And if you just pivoted the whole thing, the pattern of the pipes seemingly matched the hanging patterns of the victims this was talked about at length on prime time news channels where they're just showing you the pipes the pipes the pipes on the side of the wall and they're drawing lines around and be like there were seven women and seven of these pipes are pointing straight out and four of them are pointing down and four men died and they're and then they take the image of the wall

and just shift it, draw lines down and then be like, look, it's the same pattern that they were tied to it and it's just... Never is though, isn't it?

They had to keep the ratings up and they had nothing else to say so they were just saying fucking crazy shit and people were eating it up. So immediately, everybody needed to know about these goddamn pipes

and the favourite idea became that these pipes were a system that allowed the souls of the dead family to escape to where heaven i don't know do hindus happen again i don't i think it's like obviously your reincarnation but i think the point is that you reach enlightenment at some stage and then you go to like fucking neverland or whatever i don't know okay but it's a cycle you've got to work your way up and then you become a lost boy yeah got it anyway maybe the pipes are the key to nirvana maybe that's this is the thing often the whole thing that hindus are trying to do is hack the system hack the fucking reincarnation cycle and q jump all the way to enlightenment and

no more reincarnation right you don't want to keep it endlessly living lives on earth you want to get to you want to get to the good stuff so the way to hack the system is for example to go die in varanasi like where the gang is, because then you're straight. Yeah. Rubberdingy Rapids, straight to Nirvana. Right. So I think it's like maybe they're saying the pipes are there because this family killed themselves thinking the pipes will lead them straight to heaven. That's a serious theory that was being talked about.

And so serious that people like well if these pipes are so fucking special i need to know who put them there exactly also i'd say people are religious but they're not not everyone is crazy so they're not saying that the pipes were actually gonna do that they're saying that's what these people must have thought and that's why they did right right right so the builder who installed said pipes came forward and he told everybody that they were just there for ventilation for the plywood business and apparently the family

had just not really wanted to put a window facing another plot of land. I personally would always take a window over some pipes, but you never know. Yeah, also pipes for ventilation, 11 random pipes for ventilation. Does that work? I don't know, but that's what he said.

And he also explained that he'd just been pretty lazy and found some pipes, some of them went and some of them went out. And he was like, this is fine. I used those ones. So that's why they're pointing in different directions. They just found a bit of a cowboy builder.

There really was nothing more to it than that. But debates just like that one raged on and on on primetime television, pulling in ratings like never before. The newscasters were having the best time of their lives. But the police had to remain objective. While the nation lost its collective mind over ghosts and the occult, they needed to figure out who the hell had been writing these diary entries to the family. Because now they have it. They have these diaries. The diaries have told them what to do, but who wrote them? And at first, a woman named

Getamata was actually questioned. She was the daughter of the contractor who had been renovating the Chandrawat's home. The media pushed the idea that she was some sort of spiritual guru who had been manipulating the family, because that happens a lot, like we just said. But there was just no evidence for this at all. She was even like my dad works with dozens of people at any one time. I don't meet all of the people whose houses he's renovating. The reason they seem to have gone after her,

and I couldn't really get to the bottom of it, I do think she is some sort of like spiritual person or religious person. But a lot of the media reports just seem to keep pointing to the fact that she wore red a lot I know I mean it's like when we did fucking Damien Eccles and the West Memphis Three and they're like they're all wearing black here they're like she's wearing red get up and they do they sort of like really out her in the media. They show her face. And that kind of shit, like, sticks in India. Like, that's not a cool thing for the media to have done. And the police realised very quickly that there was no evidence

connecting this lady to the case, and they put an end to that pretty quickly. But they did continue their hunt for this mystery religious leader who had infiltrated this normal family, because they were convinced that's what happened. Little did they know that the answer to who had done this was in those very diaries and it lay much closer to home than anyone could have imagined. Upon closer inspection, the diaries revealed repeated references to 45-year-old Lalit. Many sentences peppered throughout the book stated things like,

follow Lalit's instructions or you'll be doomed. Or every time you disobey him, you hurt him physically. And then another one, just for luck, if you want to be prosperous and happy and healthy, you must follow Lalit's instructions. So was it Lalit who'd been writing all of these notes to his family? If it were, it would make sense because, well, as much sense as this case would ever make, because everyone who knew the family said that after the death of the patriarch Bhopal Singh, Lalit's dad, Lalit had become the de facto head of the house. Not unusual.

But actually it was pretty unusual because his brother Bhavesh was older than him, but Lalit had taken over anyway because he had the right personality for it. He, like his father had been, was a no-nonsense, disciplined and authoritative type of guy. And in 2007, when his dad Bhopal, whom everyone called Daddy, died, he had taken over making all of the plans and making all of the decisions. And again, I think I just want to state that in and of itself, this idea of like when the patriarch dies and then somebody needing to step up is not unusual. Most Indian families in India in particular do follow a patriarchal structure. So Lalit taking charge wasn't like some despotic anomaly. It wasn't like he was waiting in the wings like this Machiavellian character for his dad to croak it so that he

could just like jump in and run the family. It wasn't seen as that. If anything, it would be seen as more of a duty rather than a privilege. An opportunity. Exactly. And it wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing or even something maniacal or even something that other people would have resented. It would have just been the natural order. It's the way it is often in those societies. And if anything, if one of the men hadn't stepped up, so either Bovesh or Lalit hadn't stepped up to take charge, it would have been seen as weak, to be perfectly honest. And by all accounts, Lalit was a good man who cared about his family and was incredibly hardworking and always did right by them. And in the years after his father's death, under Lalit's care,

the family had actually prospered hugely. They had gone from just one shop to three, plus running a successful plywood business. But there was a darker side to it all too, something that became clear from the diaries and also from hushed interviews with relatives and friends. But to understand this, we need to go back in time a bit. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey

to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I

came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just

as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. The Chandabat family were originally from the state of Rajasthan.

They were farmers who'd moved to Delhi in 1989. Lalit, their youngest son, was always a rather complex person. He was incredibly intelligent and highly responsible, but seemed a little stiff. Yeah, all of the other brothers and cousins would drink, for example, and he would always be the one that never took part in any of that. Even as a teenager, he just wasn't interested in any of that kind of thing. And I think, you know, it just shows, like we said, he was a very disciplined person who had very high expectations for him and everyone around him. Lalit got into medical school and excelled there.

But in his senior year, he had an accident which kept him from sitting his exams. He repeated the year, but again, he was not recovered in time to take the exams that time round. So, with a heavy heart, he dropped out. He started working in a plywood shop and eventually opened his own. In 2002, he married Tina and they had their son Sivam. Things seemed to be going pretty great, but soon after 2004,

a major incident would shake Lalit's life. One night, when he was at the plywood shop on his own, he was attacked. He was pushed under several sheets of plywood and set on fire. He was saved, but after this incident, Lalit stopped speaking

and he wouldn't speak again for three whole years. And I think that with the plywood incident incident it's very hard to find any information on this it happened not like that long ago it happened in 2004 but it's very hushed up the family just say that they knew who did it but the compromises were made it's almost like they had all just come to an arrangement like we knew who did it and maybe some compensation was given but they never went to the police which isn't too atypical because it's like we don't want our family business aired everywhere but it did make me wonder and I don't mean this in like a victim blaming way but it did make me wonder what had happened or what had Lalit done to make

somebody that angry or what was he caught up? I don't know the answer to that. And then we can fast forward to February 2007, when another massive blow befell Lalit. His father, Bhopal, died unexpectedly of a respiratory illness. The family were devastated. Daddy, as they called him, was dead. And they were rudderless. The priest overseeing the funeral rites told the family that they needed to pray for ten days after Daddy's death. Lalit was present for all of the daily chanting prayers, silently mouthing along, because remember, at this point, he's still not speaking after the plywood fire. Then suddenly, one day, Lalit started chanting out loud.

That is so horrifying. With everyone else. Ah! Yeah. Everyone's freaking out. You're already in a very, like, heightened sense of emotion at a funeral like this. And another thing, insight into Hindu funerals, no one is chill. There is no stiff upper lip going on.

No silent crying. No silent crying. Absolutely not. What you want to do, do actually is it's almost shameful if a person's dead and no one is crying for them you mourn loudly because it's like a show of your love and affection and everything that's lost from your life so it's very over the top it's very theatrical people are very very whipping themselves up into a state of frenzy so after three years of silence of of being totally mute,

Lalith starts chanting and everyone was shocked. And someone at that funeral that day uttered the words that would change everything. Daddy has returned. Hate it. Hate. Hate, hate, hate. Not good. So Lalith would later tell people that his father had come to him in a dream, telling him to perform a puja that would restore his voice,

and that it had worked. And after this, the family started to pray together for 15 minutes every night before bed. You would, right? This guy is telling you that through a ritual, I was able to regain my voice after three years of not being able to speak. Now all he's saying is that we should all pray for 15 minutes every single day. And who knows what else we can achieve.

And the neighbours also noticed this because the kids, for example, Siverman and Dhruv would play with the other neighbourhood kids, play at these people's houses. And then suddenly they would declare just before 9pm that they had to go home and pray because it was time for daddy's visit. After this, the health and the wealth of the family started to improve. So after they started introducing these nightly prayer sessions, their shops were suddenly successful,

their house was getting bigger and bigger because all of the renovations they could afford and the adult children of Lalit and Buvesh were landing prime jobs and also getting prime marriage proposals. And all of this good guidance? Had it been Lalit's wisdom? Apparently not. According to other family members Lalit had been talking with his dead dad's spirit through his dreams since 2007. Daddy had been the one giving him these instructions and he was just sharing them with the family. He is but a vessel. I am the vine, you are my branches, etc. Neetu, Lalit's niece, had even told neighbours that her uncle would occasionally become possessed by her grandfather's spirit. And during these episodes of spiritual possession, Lalit would actually

speak in his dad's voice and talk like him, calling his mum Narayana, for example. And these visitations were also listed in the diaries, by daddy saying how his time spent with Lalit affected him physically. Yeah, it's basically in the diaries it's outlined that, oh, if Lalit's feeling a bit tired today, everyone should just leave him alone because I was in him all last night when I was being possessed and giving him instructions and he's just very tired and he needs to sleep. And through the diaries, Daddy also implores the family to take everything in the books deadly seriously, saying that, quote, all of your gains are thanks to Lalit and Tina. And your mistakes impact their health and well-being. So basically the message is this. Instead of doing what you want to do, follow what I want you to do,

and what I tell you to do in these diaries, and everything will be fine. And there are also very specific dates in the diaries that he, Daddy, would return on. So, for example, I'll be back next Thursday, be fully ready. And then again, if you continue to ignore these instructions, God might summon you face to face. It's so ominous because it seems very mundane, the things that he is telling them to do quite often. But it's always backed up with this incredibly sinister, incredibly ominous threat. So after reading all of this, the police were sure that Lalit must have been the ones writing the book.

After all, it keeps referencing him. But when the police had the handwriting in the diaries analysed, they were shocked to discover that the notes hadn't been written by Lalit. They had been written by Neetu and Priyanka, his two adult nieces. They're the last ones I thought it would be. Yep. It's crazy. I can't keep up.

It's crazy. I know. This story is fucking all over the place. So what the hell was going on? Because it no longer seemed like it was just Lalit who had fallen off the deep end, keeping his family in line with some sort of like bizarre notebook extravaganza filled with lengthy instructions. It now seemed like the others were complicit. So while investigators could wrap their head around perhaps the older family members going along with this sort of crazy possession story.

They could not see how the three adult girls, Neetu, Priyanka and Monu, who were all Bhavesh and Savita's children, had agreed to go along with it. They were all highly educated, had personable, how many friends they have, how outgoing they are. They're not like weirdos who never leave the house. And even if they had believed that a quote unquote cleaner life as prescribed by daddy's ghost was the way to be more prosperous, what had that final ritual hoped to achieve? Had they all meant to die? Because that flew in the face of everything. Had they meant to kill themselves? Well, it would appear not.

The diary outlined that the ritual had started a week before the family died. There were promises made of Daddy coming back in the final act of this ritual at 1am on the 30th of July and he would come back to save them all, enabling them to do even better in life. The final ritual was meant to be the ultimate test of devotion, commitment and of obedience. And it would seem like the family all agreed to do it.

The diary told investigators just that when they read the final passage. It said, God is pleased with you to know that tonight all 11 of you will be standing in one line with one thought. When performing the banyan tree ritual, do not panic. The earth might shake, the skies might tremble. Do not let this weaken your resolve. Convince the children to keep chanting. It might need five to fifteen minutes of chanting. While the chanting lasts, Lalit will protect you. When all the bindings are secure, Lalit will give the signal.

Place a glass of water nearby. When it changes colour, I will come back. Yeah, dislike. It's fucking horrendous. And when you put this unbelievably creepy ritual together with the physical evidence that was found at the scene, it paints a sad and sinister picture. Some of the family had their hands and feet tied more tightly than others, namely the young boys Dhruv and Sivam.

Like we said earlier, Bhuvesh, Lalit's brother, had actually tried to free himself from the noose. And Lalit's mother, Naranya Devi, had bruises to her body like she'd been manhandled. Lalit and his wife Tina were the only ones whose hands weren't tied properly, not like the others. It would appear that they were the last to get themselves into position, possibly just having tied their own hands up and therefore leaving the ligatures far more loose. And, like we said earlier, the bodies hanged close together.

Was this by design? So that if anyone dared not to jump from their stool when Lalit gave the signal, he would still be able to push them. The looseness of Tina's bindings and her constant mentions in the diaries as suffering alongside Lalit when the family disobeyed them really points to the fact that she was wholeheartedly in support of her husband and all of his crazy nonsense. Again, the documentary and the articles out there on this case point to the fact that Tina had a master's in sociology. But as we well know,

education doesn't always correlate with sanity or critical thinking. Yeah, because Tina's not the only one. Neetu, Priyanka, all of the girls in the house all have like master's degree education level and they all had very good jobs. Lalit had gone to medical school. No one in that house is like a bumpkin who's never left the house, right? But everybody seems to have gone along with it, from what we

can tell. The fact that the two girls were the ones writing in the diaries. So yeah, I think it's like the education doesn't have anything to do with this. It's something way deeper than that. So Tina, whatever she was to do with it, let leave her aside I think it is pretty obvious that Lalit was the main one pulling the strings and I also think it's reasonably obvious that the original delusion was his and his alone and it spread and infected the rest of the family a folie de or in this case the thing I can't connect I mean there's many but the one that I'm I'm struggling with the most is how he's getting his nieces to do the writing if it was his wife then I would be like okay but then I guess if it's you know a multi-generational

household maybe the relationships are different to one I am I have a reference point for yes I mean they are looking to him as the patriarch to guide the family, to lead the family, to make the decisions. That is not unheard of. So I think within that family structure, for him to pivot and be the delusional one, we can see that happening in other structures. It would happen even more easily here because he already has that power over them. And again, he wasn't maniac maniacal it wasn't people being like oh he's really fucking out of control and abusive to his family but i think it's just the subtleties of he was saying things like let's do this and then they were seeing results like he suddenly regains his voice out of nowhere important to say that many family members say they thought he was faking

not being able to speak for three years so it it's a long game. Possibly, possibly. And also the doctors who are interviewed say that there was nothing wrong physiologically with him that prevented him from being able to speak. I'm not saying you can't become mute because of a psychological trauma. And he went through a severe trauma because somebody tried to set him alight. But a lot of people suspect that he was faking it and then he used that to capitalize on this power grab that he had with the family but i think the challenge is that it's very clear to say that lalit is a man who was totally off his rocker out of his tree hasn't got a fucking clue and that he had his entire family sort of caught in his jet stream and was pulling them along. And it's crazy.

And I think the reason was, like I was saying, he repeatedly showed them. We do these prayers. If you become a vegetarian, if you follow these rules. Oh, look, we've opened another shop. Oh, look, we've got more money. Oh, look, Priyanka, got you a great wedding. Like, there's proof to the things that he's saying. And it's also probably at that point didn't feel like a lot to ask. Hey, we just change our diets.

We spend 15 minutes every night praying. And look at all the great shit that's happening to us and i think he just starts to sort of ramp it up and maybe lalid really did believe what he was preaching that daddy would come back and save them all that night and make their lives even better in the long run or maybe he was a man simply obsessed with control, who felt that his grip over his family was slipping. After all, we don't know if anybody in the family had started to question him, for example. But we also do know that his niece Priyanka was planning on getting married, and if she'd done that, she would have left home. And also, Dhruv and Sivam, the two boys that were bound very tightly,

who were trying to free themselves, were getting older. At some point, they could have easily turned around and started asking questions and ended up being far larger than 45-year-old Lalit. Or maybe it was some grim combination of all of the above. Yeah, I mean, I guess it has to be. Would you categorise him as a family annihilator? That's a good question. I think it comes back more to what you actually said at the start, which is you see this kind of thing in cults.

Yeah. And it feels like a cult, but a cult that was just within this one family. And they kept this all a secret. Yes, like the kids were talking to other neighbors and stuff, saying that they thought that Lalith was possessed by their grandfather at points, etc. But I think people were just like, oh, he's a bit quirky. And they just sort of brushed it off because everything else the family were doing was completely normal. Right.

So I don't know. Did he really believe what he was saying or did he just want to kill them? I think if he just wanted to end it all then yeah he's absolutely a family annihilator if he really believed it then this is a this is a case of absolute delusion wiping out an entire family and i think that it is very complicated i think like i said where's that line between faith and delusion it is a country and it is a society that is deeply steeped in religion and that kind of spirituality. So it's hard to know, like, where do you draw the line? And I often think this with religious people.

If you're willing to believe this, why wouldn't you believe this? Yeah. Like, where do you draw the line? I ask that question all the time. Precisely. And I think that there's that and there's also many conversations to be had around mental health. Clearly, this was a man who was delusional. Yes.

For a very long time and nothing happened. But I don't know. We'll never know. And we even only know this because of the diaries. Yeah. If those diaries weren't there, this would have been one of those great unsolved cases. And like, what makes me think delusion rather than anything else is that I don't think anyone was trying to hide it no no I think you're right and also I guess the question

I have as well if it wasn't just if it wasn't delusion if it was just family annihilation why would you pick a method of killing everybody that was so much hard work true very true it's so manual it's so like methodical it's so much like effort that needed to be prepared he could have just been like ah people are starting to not believe me anymore and either people are starting to not believe me anymore and i'm losing power or people are starting to not believe me and something catastrophic is going to happen because he's delusional i just slipped some fucking poison into everybody's coffee like why go to this extent so i don't know what i do know is that daddy wasn't coming back and speaking to him

and this ritual was going to achieve precisely nothing apart from potentially killing everybody which it did yeah so yeah absolutely wild there you have it back to india where we haven't been for quite some time nope back in the hood back in the hood back in your hood i hope you enjoyed it what i'm pleased it's not a mystery i'm pleased we know um and hopefully you enjoyed that and hopefully you can get yourself over to redhandedpodcast.com to get your tour tickets they are flying out the door make sure you get them just in case you need reminding again london edinburgh manchester dublin oslo helsinki stockholm berlin get them before they case you need reminding again. London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Dublin, Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, Berlin. Get them before they don't exist anymore.

And we'll see you on the road in a month's time. Exactly. Bye. Bye. Transcription by CastingWords biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath,

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