‘New’ notes from 2007 found, police probing presence of 12th person in Delhi family deaths case

The Delhi police are investigating the possibility of the presence of a 12th person in the Burari house where 11 members of a family were found dead on Sunday, even as they recovered more hand-written notes that suggest the family may have dabbled in occult practices since 2007. Either the family believed that a superpower would enter through the gate and save them the moment they hanged, or a 12th person was present in the house at the time of the deaths.” Police said the fresh handwritten notes they recovered from one of the rooms were written way back in 2007, when the patriarch of the family died. “The entire family was devastated by the death, but his youngest son Lalit Bhatia was the most affected,” the investigator said on condition of anonymity. Interactions with a couple of local residents revealed that the family had casually mentioned that Lalit Bhatia would see his father in his dreams and had been “possessed” by his father’s soul. The probe so far has suggested that it was Lalit Bhatia who was writing all the notes and was leading the “ritualistic practices.” “Our interaction with psychologists has indicated that the family could be suffering from ‘shared psychotic disorder’ in which all the members in a group do the bidding of their leader as they trust them unconditionally and believe they would be led out of the worldly problems,” said another senior police officer on condition of anonymity.