Burari Deaths - 623
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How are you doing tonight, Aaron? I'm doing good. How are you? I'm doing okay. We have any announcements? Yes. If you want to know where Justin and I will be this year, I strongly urge you to go out to our website, genwypod.com. That's genwypod.com.

It has tons of information, and it also has things you'll want to know about us. If you want any updates, forget about having to go to each social media app that you have on your phone. Just head out to genypod.com for any information you might need or want. So if anyone hasn't noticed, we have a Patreon. A lot of content out there. Tons. So go out and check it out. Yeah, and the best thing might be just our chats, Justin, where we get on and just talk about stuff. Yeah.

Catch people up on what we've been up to or talking off the cuff about updates in the news or prior cases we've covered.

So Aaron, tonight's case is an interesting one. We always cover a lot of cases where there's a question, was it murder or was it suicide? And a lot of these cases, it's typically one family member and there's some mysterious circumstances around their death. Nobody in the family can believe that they were depressed or they would take their own life. And it's really hard for people to accept that.

suicide. But what if it wasn't just one family member? What if it's an entire family, up to 11 people, ranging from grandparents to children? It's not as easy to come up with answers for something like that. And obviously, tonight's case is going to be talking about these topics, so just forewarning. But with that, Aaron, what are we talking about tonight?

Tonight, we're talking about the July 1st, 2018 deaths of 11 members of the Chandrawat family who were found in the home and the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the bodies and what the responders saw. It's something that was shocking in India at the time and probably still is today. Yeah, it was national news over there.

For anyone that doesn't know, India has a very large population. I remember back in, I think, 2012, they had some electrical problems. They had a blackout that impacted over 400 million people. That's about half of India. And if you take that in consideration, US has a little over 300 million people in it. So every single person in America would have been affected by a blackout. And that was just

half of India's population. This happens in Delhi and the city of Delhi has 30 million people in it. It's like three times the size of New York. So this is a huge area, huge population of people, very condensed population of people. And I want to go ahead and say it up front, the people in Delhi do not trust their police force.

If you do a quick Google search for the Delhi police, you will find tons of articles talking about their corruption. So when an incident like this happens, of course, anything the police say is going to be taken with a grain of salt from the public and the media. They're going to question everything in the investigation. So it's just kind of setting the scene for this case tonight.

Yeah, so this Chandrawat family, it consisted of three generations. And they all lived in the same house in Barari, North Delhi. And Bhopal Singh was the patriarch.

Back in the day, he had started going by his wife's last name, Narayani. Her last name was Batia because her father gave him work and took him in as part of the family before the marriage. He felt so honored and everything, he decided to take her father's last name.

Now, he was considered a simple man. His family owned a successful eight-acre farm, but Bhopal fell into debt. He had spent all of his earnings on his children's marriages. He was so proud of them, but this really caught up to him. And he was forced to sell the land in the late 1980s. And then the family relocated to Delhi.

because Bhopal wanted a change of scenery. He didn't want the people that knew him to know what he had done, that he had lost all of his money. It was a downfall, as he put it.

Yeah. And he was kind of the one that called the shots in the family. He was in charge. He was the patriarch. And the family relied heavily on him for direction. They relied heavily on him to make decisions and give advice, all of these things. So when he says, we're moving, they agree to that and they move. And I think that's an important piece to this case is

is they listen to him, they respect him. And he was very respected by the community and in the neighborhood. And when they moved to the big city and to this neighborhood, everyone loved him and they loved the family. They were very respected, very well known. Their neighbors would talk to them every day, say hello. They would work for the local shops around the way. So this is

Essentially a good move for the family once they get to Delhi. But things take another downturn when Bhopal died of natural causes in July of 2007. And this was really hard on the family, especially his son Lalit.

So at the time, the financial troubles had returned and Lalit took over as head of the family, but he was not the eldest son. He just was the one that stepped in and basically took over. So he started making financial decisions, property decisions, and business decisions on the family's behalf. Bhuvnesh was the more reserved brother and Lalit seemed to have more respect than him. So this is something that just happened.

And it had nothing to do with the age. So gradually, though, Lalit is making the right decisions and the family finances are improving. He owned a plywood store that he ran from the ground floor of his house. And Bhavnesh owned a general store in Parari. Their sister Priyanka worked a corporate job. She was the only other working member of the family.

But they needed somebody to kind of take charge. So he had stepped in and made the decisions and took on the role of the father because that's the hierarchy in this family. Even in my family, Aaron, I think my grandmother was sort of the one that brought everyone together, kept everyone going, brought us all together for Christmas and the holidays. And when she got dementia and passed away, everything kind of fell apart.

So this is, I think, typical in any family. You have somebody, either a patriarch or a matriarch, who calls the shots or just keeps everybody together. And so when that person goes away, you either have a family that is divided or you have somebody else that kind of steps up and takes charge.

In the early 2000s, it was seen that the family had become more spiritual. And before starting his own business, Lalit had worked at a plywood store in Delhi suburbs. On March 26th, 2004, Lalit got into a dispute with his employer over payment. They got into a physical fight and Lalit was locked inside the store, which was set on fire.

So when he came to, he realized that a piece of plywood had fallen on him and he called his brother for help. But because of this incident, Lalit lost the ability to speak for about three years and they said he was shut down during this time. He quit his job and that really hit the family. Their financials again took a dip.

But this wasn't the first time that Lalit had suffered an injury like this. He had gotten into a motorcycle accident in 1988 and spent days in the hospital and missed his college exams. And he had also suffered a severe head injury, which caused him to fall asleep in the middle of conversations. But, you know, eventually Lalit, he gains his ability to speak again. And the family sees this as a result of prayers. So that's why they become more spiritual.

He's quiet. He's mute for years. And he is reserved. He's not engaging. And then all of a sudden, they're doing prayer, they're chanting, and he's able to speak again. And this is a miracle in all of their eyes.

Well, there was a man that worked at Lalit's store for about eight years, and he said he never saw an argument among the family. No one ever raised their voice. They were a unit. They worked together. And he said they were religious people who prayed twice a day. And he said as far as everything he saw, he said they welcomed him and treated him like he was one of their own.

And see, with that, I guess I question, okay, I own a store. One of my employees has a problem with pay. My reaction is to lock him inside of my own store and set it on fire and lose everything? I kind of have some questions there. This is how this story is reported, so this is complete speculation on my behalf.

But I wonder if this fire wasn't started by other people, but started by LeWitt himself.

So let's go to the day in question, Aaron. A lot of this information comes from the Times of India. June 30th at 8 p.m., Lalit closed down his plywood shop and went home. Bhavnesh closed his store at 10 p.m., then he went home. And at 11 p.m., Lalit called his sister, Sujata, who didn't live with the family because he wanted to find out how she was doing.

At 7.15 a.m. on July 1st, neighbor Gurcharan Singh went to the family home after noticing both of the shops were still closed. Bhavnesh normally opened his general store at 5.30 a.m., and by 7 a.m., customers were lined up outside waiting to be let in. So Singh knocked on the door and realized that it wasn't locked. So he pushed it open, and that's when he made the terrible discovery.

He saw 10 bodies hanging from an iron grate in the ceiling, including the two young 15-year-old boys.

Nine of them were hanging close together and one woman was hanging opposite of them. Obviously, police officers are going to be called and they come in and they say, the formation in which they were hanging reminded me of a banyan tree, like branches of the tree suspended downwards. They too were suspended in the same manner by colorful scarves and a banyan tree is

Its branches will come out and then it's like vines coming down to the ground to make more roots. And a banyan tree will just keep growing, getting larger from their branches. And this is what this officer perceives this to look like. Let's talk about the family here. Narayani was lying on the floor in another room. The hands and legs of each person were bound.

The children's feet were touching the ground. The boys' feet were bound tightly and their hands were bound behind their backs.

Each person was gagged and blindfolded and cotton was stuffed in their ears. And it appeared that Bhuvnesh might have tried to free himself as one of his hands had come loose. Narayani had a scarf around her neck. She had marks on her neck the same size as a belt found in the room with her, but only on one side, which was deemed suspicious. Narayani was the oldest. She was the grandmother here.

And the police found it interesting that she wasn't hanging. She was on the ground and appeared to be strangled by some kind of ligature, possibly the belt.

And they make comments about, well, if she had hanged herself, it would be a V marking across her neck. And this was just on one side. So they suspect somebody did this to her before they did whatever they did to the family. So she was taken out and then left on the ground.

Police officer Vineet Kumar said the police received a call on July 1st that some members of a family had died of suicide.

And, of course, once the officers are in the house, they're not sure what to make of this. Now, they noticed there were no signs of forced entry. Money was found in the house. And the women were wearing gold jewelry. The family dog was found on the terrace. The family had adopted this dog when he was a puppy to guard their shops and house. His name was Jackie. He was a ferocious dog who did not allow a stranger to enter unless he was on a leash.

And neighbors said they never heard him barking during the night. So that's to say that it doesn't appear that anybody had entered and done this.

And this dog, though, was out on this terrace. And the terrace is this balcony of the house. And he was actually leashed up to the metal grate, the rods that the family was hanging from. But he was above them. So I guess I think if somebody did come in and do this and he was out there all night leashed up,

Well, he wouldn't have been able to prevent somebody from, you know, an intruder from doing harm to the family because he was leashed up outside. But it is sort of a morbid scene where the dog is right above the family up on the terrace. But like I said, nobody reported hearing the dog barking. Even if the dog couldn't do anything, you'd think the dog would react if somebody had shown up.

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So it's a mysterious scene, right? There are some surviving family members who speak and they say, you know, they actually live outside Delhi, but they say, we don't think this is a mass suicide as it's being reported by some. Then as for the police, they registered the case as a murder case on July 2nd.

They registered it as a murder case because the morning that this family is found, the police show up and they're talking about an entire family that's been killed or found dead. Hundreds of people on the streets show up. And by noon, it's probably a thousand people are trying to see what's going on, trying to figure out how is a whole family dead.

And then when the police come out and say, we think it's suicide, well, the police are not believed. The police are thought to be corrupt.

And the family saying, we don't think it's suicide. How do you, how does 11 members of a family kill themselves? That's just unheard of. So no one believes the police. There's a mob, a crowd outside trying to see what's going on. So the police are like, okay, well, we'll investigate it as a murder case now. But initially they said suicide. So it was a little bit of public pressure and family pressure there.

So investigators, they questioned how no other family members knew anything had been going on with this family. They also questioned how 11 people, especially the teen boys, could be convinced to end their lives or allow others to do so in front of them.

One of the things they do find at the scene, though, is evidence of a ritual, a ritual that involves the burning of food offerings in the family prayer area. They also locate a notebook in that area that contained spiritual topics. But Justin, more diaries are found, and this kind of sheds a lot of light on the whole situation.

But you got to understand, Aaron, at this point, half the city of Delhi has descended upon this few city blocks. They think that this is a murder. They're not believing the police. They're not even accepting the police saying, oh, we're going to investigate it as a murder. They're just like, no, we need justice here. They are marching in the streets. They are upset. Anything that's coming out at this point,

is being discarded as misinformation, is being discarded as lies from the police.

And they start coming up with conspiracies of what happened here and meaning to things. So before we get to the diary, they're already looking at 11 members of a family have been found dead. There's 11 pipes on the side of the building. There's 11 slots in this vent inside the house.

They're trying to put numerology and the number 11 into this. They're trying to say that there was roving cult members that came in and did this. There is so much conspiracy surrounding this case that by the time law enforcement starts talking about these diaries, let's just say the train is completely off the rails as far as the public is concerned.

Yeah, I'd even heard that they thought maybe the 11 pipes had something to do with the spirits of those inside the house. And these are just like what looks like plumbing pipes that are just coming out the wall. And they're saying, what are these pipes for? It's not for plumbing. They're not emptying water.

So there's an explanation given that they were for ventilation. And then they're like, well, why are plumbing pipes that have right angle curves on them for ventilation? And then there's actually an interview with the construction, like the foreman guy who installed the pipes. And he readily admits it was just a half-assed job. He's like, they wanted some ventilation. They wanted some airflow in the building. So we just...

poke some holes in the wall and put these pipes in. They're completely random to get to different rooms. And he's like, there's nothing more to it. But if you look at the pipes placement and you look at the bodies and how they were hanging, people were like, no, they're in the same configuration and there's 11. But yet there wasn't 11 members of the family hanging. There was 10 and one was on the floor. So

Again, it's just people jump to these conclusions and connect the dots in their head to come up with these explanations. And when even the truth or valid facts come out, they will be dismissed and disregarded immediately because people have already found their own truth.

So the investigators, they're going through these diaries. They found 11 of them. The earliest dated back to 2007. The latest one, with the last entry, being dated just before the deaths. And they're going through these diaries and they're finding evidence that this was a religious ritual. That it wasn't just a murder or something like that. There was a lot more to this scene and

and a lot more that would explain why it went down the way it went down. So they brought in Dr. Varendra Singh, who was a forensic handwriting analyst, and they studied the 11 diaries. And according to the forensic expert, Lalit, Priyanka, and Neetu contributed to these diaries. And they contained instructions for each member of the family over all this time.

And of course, there's 11 diaries, one for each member. That number 11 just keeps coming up. But they start finding these instructions for each member. And it's like, hey, you always struggled with this portion of your life, so therefore you should work on that. Or you don't get along with your sister. Please mend these issues that you have and do better. They're mostly positive, I would say.

Yeah, mostly. But it shows just how disciplined the family was. But the investigators are finding that there must have been some consultation with a religious leader for all this to come down the way it did. So the public, of course, they think that there's a woman who's responsible. And her name was Gita Mata. Her father had renovated the Chandawat family home.

And the media portrayed her as the family's spiritual guru. So she ended up getting arrested and questioned by the police. But when she spoke to the press, she said, I am innocent. And she said she didn't meet anyone her father worked for.

And she's referred to as a tantric and a guru. She's interviewed and she's wearing like a red dress, but she's wearing the color red. And I guess they associate that with some sort of spiritual advisor. And so even though she's saying, I don't have anything to do with this family, I am not their guru. I'm not their advisor.

People are like, no, look at her. She's wearing red. And that's exactly what somebody would say who's responsible for their deaths. And of course, you know, you have the plumber who has the pipes protruding out of the wall and they're questioning this, right?

Some people did say, if you look at the pipes, one of the pipes is separate from the others, just like the matriarch of the family was found separate from the others. But again, this stuff doesn't really mean anything. And so, you know, these are just leads. The police follow them. They look at it and they can't find anything to run on with it. So they just move on. But really, it's the diaries. They read through them. They start to see a picture forming.

Now, I had said that the first entry was made in September 2007. Well, that was just a few months after Bhopal died. And these entries start coming in, and there are things in the diary such as, you all are making Lalit very anxious. Follow Lalit's instructions or else the outcome will be disastrous. So you can see where Lalit has not just taken hold of leading the family, helping them make decisions, but

This is like orders. These are orders coming down. And it's like, do this or everything will fall apart. There was no threat of violence. It was like, everything will be ruined if you don't follow these instructions.

And the entries are like, don't use mobile phones. Don't disclose these rituals to anyone else. Don't talk about Fight Club to anyone, essentially. And then it gives schedules to these rituals will be performed on Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. And you kind of get the sense that Lalit is not himself anymore on these nights of these rituals.

He's actually channeling something, somebody else, right? Yeah, he's channeling Bhopal. And they believe that the final ritual was performed in the night so that there would be no interruption. And this ritual was likely very lengthy. And the note spoke about the widows hanging separately.

The 77-year-old Narayani Devi was found dead in an adjacent room and her widowed daughter was found hanging from a window grill away from the rest of the family. It said the ritual required participants to tie their hands and legs, blindfold and gag themselves, and stuff their ears with cotton balls. Only Lalit's wife Tina did not have any restraints on her, suggesting she was the one who tied everyone else's hands before taking her own life.

The officer, paraphrasing the diary entry, said the family had to tie the noose around their neck and then get their hands bound by someone else. The moment they hanged themselves and began gasping, they would see God saving them. So here's something we have to get to right now, because anytime you read about this, there's a good chance people will say this is a suicide. We're going to get more into this, but just understand that these people, these family members,

They believe they're doing a ritual for a purpose. And that doesn't mean that they want to die. It means they're performing a ritual.

It's a little culty because, hey, a lot of different religious groups, even here in America, they have a belief. And sometimes that belief does lead to death. But at no point in their mind do they believe they're going to die or they think they're going to transcend. They think there's going to be some sort of change. And it's not them taking their own life. It's not them being depressed or hopeless. It's them thinking there's going to be a transformation.

a transition. And with this family, they're performing this ritual and they absolutely believe that God is going to step in and save them and they're going to have a better life at that point. And I will say though, that some of those diary entries towards the end were a little bit more, I guess, threatening. One of them, it's not just

Listen to me. It's listen to God and God is telling you to do this. And it says, if God's warnings are not heeded, then God summons you in person. If you don't listen to God, if you don't listen to these instructions, then God will summon you in person. I personally take that as if God's paying you a visit, it's for punishment, it's for judgment, or you're going to die. So you need to listen.

Yeah, I took that as you will be summoned, meaning you'll be gone because you'll be in heaven having to answer to God. Yeah, it's kind of a threat. So obey these instructions and fulfill this ritual.

Yeah, the diary also said that the family members needed to worship the banyan tree for seven days at a stretch with devotion. So there's this entry on June 24, 2018, discussing performing the banyan ritual for seven days. It said, perform the bod ritual for seven consecutive days. If somebody visits the home, it has to be performed the next day. Nothing should be visible. Dim light should be used.

The eyes should be completely shut. The blindfold should be properly tied on the eyes. The mouth should be gagged by the handkerchief. The state of mind has to be zero, nothing but infinity. While you are standing at attention, imagine the branches of the tree are wrapping themselves around you. Perform the banyan tree ritual with unity and determination. This will help repent for your mistakes.

Bodies were found in positions similar to what's written in this diary. Narayana was in the other room. One note in the diary says, the elderly woman can't stand so she can lie down in another room because this would be too stressful on her because none of them were really hanging above the ground. Most of their feet were touching the ground.

But she's so old that she couldn't stand for that prolonged period of time, so they said she can lie down. Or at least this diary entry says she's allowed to do that. One of the investigators in this says there is a thin line between faith and delusion. They have full faith that they're going to live. They have full faith that what they're doing is the right thing.

By July 2nd, six post-mortem reports had been completed. The cause of death for five people was ligature hanging, but Narayani died of strangulation. The police were still waiting on testing to determine if the family had been poisoned or even sedated, and they were still looking into whether someone abetted the deaths, meaning, did someone else help that's not present?

July 3rd, a police source revealed that Lalit Chandawat told his family that his deceased father's soul had possessed him to give them advice on various issues. Remember, when Bhopal had died, the family was thinking, maybe that's it. Our future is doomed.

We have no way forward, but luckily Lalit stepped up. But with that, over time, it became Bhopal was speaking through Lalit and was giving them very good advice, they thought, on various issues and helped them put their lives in order. And Lalit believed his father visited him in his dreams, and he shared those instructions with the rest of the family.

And remember, he wasn't able to speak for three years. And now he's speaking and he's chanting and he's praying. And then he starts to channel the dead father. So this is an interesting turn of events for the family and they need something to believe in.

Tina, she always agreed with her husband. One friend described them as two bodies but one soul. One diary entry said, all your present gains are thanks to Lalit and Tina's efforts. Every small mistake you make has an effect on Lalit and Tina's well-being. So to protect them, you will all be put through a test till Diwali.

And in the documentary, one of the daughters, Neetu, told neighbors that her uncle was possessed by her grandfather's spirit and was guiding the family. So she, I guess, didn't follow all the instructions to not talk about this. They said that when he was possessed, his voice would change.

And he would sound like Bhopal. And whatever Lalit wrote in the diaries, the family assumed were instructions from Bhopal. They truly, utterly believed that this was exactly what was happening. They were getting messages from him through Lalit. And...

As part of the investigation, they found that every member of that house, except for the grandmother, referred to Lalit as Daddy, as if he were Bhopal.

Now, of course, the police are looking at this and they're questioning Lalit's mental state. It's one thing for everyone to believe what Lalit's telling them, but they're questioning why would Lalit give these instructions? So they thought maybe there was a delusional disorder going on. And so a clinical psychologist spoke with the Hindustan Times.

And their name was Rajit Mitra. And he said he considered the deaths to be a shared psychotic disorder. Lalit obtained the unquestionable loyalty of the family. And Rajit said, such people take at least three years to attain the position of such unquestionable leadership. But they have their target in sight right from the first day.

After the death, people familiar with the family started to doubt that Lalit really couldn't speak for three years. And they started to believe that he was faking it the whole time. And after he started speaking again, the family decided that they shouldn't talk about it and just try to move on.

there were people that asked, like, hey, what's up with Lolite? And the family would just say, ah, it's fine. He can't talk right now. Or when he started talking, people would ask about it, and they'd be like, meh, he's talking, and let's just be thankful that he's part of the family again and talking to us. It was very dismissed and not talked about amongst the family, which is sad because we should be talking about mental health and

Right, but this is part of the theory that Lalit did all this to attain that unquestionable leadership that he had wanted, possibly.

And this is why earlier in the episode, you heard me kind of speculate on that fire with his employer's lumber shop. I'm like, well, maybe Leluit was not feeling good. Maybe he was done with life. Maybe that was an attempt on himself and not as it's portrayed as, you know, he was attacked by his employer. He was attacked by somebody else.

Again, I'm speculating, but to me it fits with his later on behaviors, especially with the family.

Or possibly he set all that up so that he would have a reason not to be speaking for a while and everybody would really wonder, like, how did you come to be able to speak again? And what are you saying about Bhopal? And, you know, so there's a whole backstory here. You can't just show up and expect everyone to listen to you. There's got to be some angle. And that's quite possible here.

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So Lolita did tell a friend that all of his success was because of his father's blessing, but he never said he was possessed by his father's spirit. So there's some speculation as well that the trigger for the deaths was Priyanka's engagement. If she got married, she was going to leave the household and might reveal what was going on within the family. It's one thing for someone to stay kind of quiet when they're in the house, but if they're out of the house and they're out around other people all the time,

They might start talking about the spirit of Bhopal and all of these instructions and what's going on. He loses control and somebody when they're not living moment to moment in this environment and they can see clearly, they might talk about it now.

One person did say, and this is in the documentary, by the way, that Lalit's behavior changed just a few days before the engagement. He became more reserved. He avoided conversations that he normally wouldn't avoid. Priyanka went on a walk with this same friend who spoke in the documentary and asked if Lalit was okay. And Priyanka hesitated before saying yes. She claimed Lalit had a throat problem.

And this engagement party is just, what, two weeks before this event. And at the party, there's people partying, people dancing, singing. And I'm watching this, Aaron, and I'm looking at the photos and the videos, and Lalit is not engaging with anyone. And everyone here just seems to be in default happy mood. I mean, even when some people are talking about...

the deaths of their family. They're smiling because they're just all happy people and that's just their default. But he never smiles. He doesn't laugh. He doesn't speak. He just stands there. I won't even call it stoically. He just stands there blankly. And it's said that at this engagement party, when people tried to talk to him, he would turn his back on them or even walk away.

So obviously he is completely withdrawn from everyone. Now, a former housemaid who had quit working for the family around 2012, about six years earlier, said no one had noticed anything unusual because no one had been inside the house. She said Lalit would often lose control of himself wherever there were religious functions. He would start saying incomprehensible things and often acted very weirdly.

Now, investigators also discovered that Lalit had been researching death and mysteries of soul, and he liked watching paranormal shows on YouTube.

July 5th, the police revealed that the family was confident that they would survive the ritual and planned to repeat it with a relative who was having problems. Again, this was not a suicide. This was a ritual that they thought they were going to survive. An officer says, as per the notes, the family's next plan was to replicate the

The ritualistic exercise with Tina's sister, Mamta. However, Mamta wasn't aware of what they had planned for her. It's kind of a scary situation if you think about it.

Yeah, and the family had been hosting relatives to celebrate Priyanka's engagement. So they waited until everyone left on June 23rd to start the seven-day banyan ritual. An officer said the first six days, according to the notes, involved rehearsals in which they would bind their limbs, blindfold themselves, and tie the noose around their necks. So this was all leading up to the big day. On the seventh day, they believed that they would hang themselves,

and then Bhopal would show up. They would get to see Bhopal again, and they could thank him for their good fortune. They never expected to die. There's an entry in the diary that read, God is pleased with you, knowing that 11 of you are standing in one line with one thought. Do not panic while performing the banyan tree ritual. The earth might shake or the skies might tremble. Don't let this weaken your resolve. Convince the children to keep changing. The chanting may last from 5 to 15 minutes.

Till the chanting lasts, Lalit will protect all of you. The responsibility of tying up everyone has been assigned to one of you. When all the binds are secure, then Lalit will give a signal with a stick. Place a tumbler full of water nearby. Just as the color of the water changes, I will come back.

Now, the police are looking into this and they want to make sure that nobody else was involved. And they want to prove to the public that this was, you know, I'm going to just say suicide, but this was self-inflicted and not homicide. So they get CCTV footage from a neighbor's house that captures all of the family's activities on the night of their deaths.

On June 28, 2018, Tina and her son purchased four stools. At 9.40 p.m. on June 30, Tina and another female family member were seen carrying the stools into the house. 10.29 p.m., Lolita's son, Chavan, opened up the plywood shop and took a bundle of wires upstairs.

These items would be used in the ritual. A food delivery boy stopped by the house, but no one entered for the rest of the night. So unless the quote-unquote murderer came days or weeks before and was hiding out, all of this footage seems to show the family bringing the items, the ligatures, the stools, the scarves, all of these things to their own house.

On July 6th, it was reported that the family believed the ritual would free not only the spirit of Beau Paul, but four others that were trapped in the house. This is according to the diary entries. And they were four individuals who were former family members who had died. And there was a note written in July of 2015 that said, four souls are still wandering with me. If you improve yourself, these souls will be freed. You feel that by completing all the rituals,

The souls achieve salvation. I am accompanied by the souls of others also. Lelit, he is the leader of this family and he will discipline. He will make them stand like soldiers after morning prayer to increase their mental strength. He is going to save this family and save even the dead relatives and ancestors. And he is going to empower their souls.

So again, the family needed to listen to Lalit, aka Bhopal, because that would make sure that everything was going well. And if they didn't, then there would be problems. So whether it was do this or we'll have problems or do this or you might be killed, essentially, they needed to comply. And it really felt like the family was all of the same belief that Bhopal was speaking to them through Lalit.

So the final post-mortem report confirmed that 10 out of 11 family members died of hanging, but Narayani, Bhavanesh, and Patiba died of partial hanging. Narayani was found on the floor with the scarf around her neck tied to the handle of the wardrobe. Police believe that she tied the scarf to the handle and then rolled off the bed.

One of the diaries stated that she was elderly and overweight, so she could not complete the ritual like the others. Narayani might have been forced because she had injuries on her body as if someone had grabbed her tightly. The police believe the children were tied very tightly because they would not want to go through with the ritual. Lalit and Tina's hands were not tied properly and their legs were not bound. This indicated that they helped the others complete the ritual and were the last to die.

I think this is the police giving a good analysis of the scene and actually doing their due diligence of, okay, they're not as bound, so therefore they're the ones that helped the others bind up and do this. But again, Aaron, you have the surviving members of this family saying they were brave, they were smart, they were confident, they would never do this. And

And every time they're questioning the evidence, the police will say, okay, well, we have security footage. No one else entered the home. And they're like, well, security footage could have been doctored, could have been edited. We have these diaries. Well, who wrote these diaries? And I think at the end, most of the surviving family has accepted that this was a terrible tragedy, an accidental death of

ritual, but the rest of the public, they absolutely still question this to this day. They absolutely disregard anything the police say. But this devastates this family. I mean, one family member says he's given up his belief in God. He's now an atheist, I guess, because you could not accept that God would allow this to happen. God would not intervene. God would not instill some, I guess,

common sense or intelligence or something into one of the family members' minds to say, hey, what we're doing is wrong.

And so he's like, if God allowed this to happen, then there is no God. And he no longer believes in religion or a God. And he's very vocal on the documentary. And I feel his pain because his entire family, like three generations of family died in one go. And he's struggling with understanding and grasping this horrible tragedy here. And every step of the way in this case, Aaron, you have...

media frenzy, even to the point when they are trying to remove the bodies from the building and take them to the morgue. Paparazzi, the journalists, are taking photos of the bodies in the back of these vans and these vehicles to the point where when they're doing their ceremony, their burial or cremation ceremony, there's paparazzi and journalists trying to take photos of that.

And since they believe in cremation, they have to burn 11 bodies. And they kind of do it one at a time. So it takes a long time. And for the family members to stand around and see one after another after another, it's crushing. And this was a big deal because nothing like this has ever happened before in Delhi. Nothing like this happens over there.

So this whole media frenzy was just re-victimizing the family and even people that were associated, like the plumber or the daughter that was considered the guru. All of these people are being harassed and blamed for this family's death. And at the end of the day, what is it? Is it just because we don't want to talk about mental illness? We don't want to talk about...

harmful beliefs that they were keeping a secret from the rest of the world. We don't want to accept that people can feel despair and latch on to hope in different ways. It's just hard for me to comprehend how the surviving members of this family go forward from here.

Yeah. The issue here too is you have to understand the family, these people were intelligent people, educated people, but it comes down to two weaknesses. One, it said that in India, and this isn't uncommon in the world, but in India, especially, there's a lot of problems trying to speak about or deal with mental health issues. It's just not done. The other thing is, is there's an elder in the family who is in charge of

And you can't be disobedient. That is not allowed. It's not accepted. And so with those two things hand in hand, what could they have done? They really were being told and were probably believing most of them, if not all of them, that by listening to the spirit of Bhopal that everything was going to go well. On top of that, this ritual was probably done a number of times before. How many? I don't know. But

They had already done it successfully a number of times, and they had scheduled another one, even though that family member was not aware at the time that this was going to happen. They were going to invite another family member in and do the ritual with them. So there was no idea, again, to stress this, that they were going to die. And so no matter what you want to say about this, I have a hard time labeling this as a suicide, because even though that's

And not even the police department will refer to this as a mass suicide.

So if you do hear that, just understand that's not the whole story. People have beliefs. And I'll point this out. I mean, even baseball players or hockey players or whoever, some people have little rituals they do. And they think, oh, I'm going to keep doing this because when I did it before, I had good fortune or I got that home run or I scored the game-winning goal. People get into a habit. They form a tradition, basically, around a ritual. And even though this is...

bigger ritual than what sports players do, they really thought they were doing the right thing. It's difficult as an outsider to be able to break through that and tell someone if you did find out what was going on, hey, you shouldn't do that. That's dangerous because they put their faith in it. And faith is something that goes beyond truth and goes beyond reality. I mean, our beliefs can be very powerful.

I just think of all of the religious groups, cults, and whatnot here in America. Here we have some powerful beliefs and we have highly educated, very intelligent people that can be manipulated, can be influenced into doing horrible and astonishing things.

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