Pod Insights Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries 119: The Burari Deaths: One Family, Eleven Bodies About this episode In 2018, 11 people in the Chundawat family were found dead from what looked like a ritual sacrifice. It left the public with questions: was the family corrupted by a evil guru? Was this a robbery gone wrong? Or was there something even darker at play?
TW: Suicide, child death
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kaelyn Moore? This episode is brought to you by GU Skincare. GU just launched their Heal and Seal Trio, a simple three-step Korean skincare routine that replaces those complicated seven-step regimens: Polish pads to exfoliate, toner pads for dark spots and redness, and NAD Plus cream to lock in hydration overnight. These three products, three minutes a day. Dermatologist tested with over 650,000 happy customers and a 90-day money-back guarantee. Recently, I've been using their NAD Plus cream, which has been so nice to put on at night. I really love it. It's not super heavy, which I love, but it still feels very moisturizing. It doesn't have a lot of scent, which I'm really sensitive to, which is why it works great in my routine. For a limited time, GU is having a crazy deal for our listeners. Their Heal and Seal Trio is already up to 50% off right now,
0:45 Kaelyn Moore? but our listeners can now get an additional 20% off plus free shipping with code HSP at J I Y U skin dot com. That's J I Y U skin dot com and use code HSP for an additional 20% off. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. It was the morning of July 1st, 2018, just after 5:30 a.m. A milk delivery truck rumbled down a quiet street in the Burari neighborhood of Delhi in north-central India, and it stopped just outside of a storefront. It was a little more than a bodega, but it served as a vital hub for the densely-packed village. And every morning, the delivery truck dropped off a fresh load of milk and one member of the Chandwat family,
1:29 Kaelyn Moore? who owned the store, would run out and grab it. But today, something seemed off. As the driver unloaded the crate from the back, he saw the shop's metal grate was still closed and bolted. That was strange. He rapped on the metal door,
1:45 Kaelyn Moore? but no answer. So he looked up above the store to the apartment where the Chundawat family lived. Maybe they were still upstairs, though it didn't really look like there was any activity inside. Well, they would probably be down soon enough, he figured. So he left the crate out front and he got back to the rest of his route.
2:03 Kaelyn Moore? Less than an hour later, Mrs. Core, one of the Chundawat's neighbors, was making breakfast in her kitchen when she heard a group of people loudly complaining down on the street. It was punctuated by rattling knocks on metal.
2:18 Kaelyn Moore? Downstairs, she found a dozen customers crowded in front of the shop. It still wasn't open. This had never happened before. The Chandawats always opened the store on time. There were 11 of them, after all, that lived above the store, and one of them always came down to open it. They were seriously the most reliable family in the neighborhood. This concerned Mrs. Core, so she tried calling the Chundawat house. No one picked up. She dialed again. Still, nothing. A sour knot in her gut tugged at her. Something wasn't right, so she woke up her husband and sent him across the street to check on the family. He was back only a few minutes later, pale and out of breath.
3:01 Kaelyn Moore? "Call the police," he gasped, "immediately."
3:06 Kaelyn Moore? Welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding. As always, I'm your host, Kayla Moore. One thing that has always fascinated me is how someone's descent into madness can cause others to follow them. I've talked about this actually a lot on this show. It came up in the episode I did on the Runeherwald secluded family, and more recently in the episode I did on Paul Mackenzie and the Good News International Ministries. And today, I want to tell you the story of the Chundawat family, a seemingly normal family from India who were harboring a very, very dark secret. And maybe you've seen the docu-series that came out about this case on Netflix a few years ago. It's phenomenal. I would definitely check it out. But today, I want to go beyond it, and I think it's worth it to stick around to the end to hear some more thoughts and
3:51 Kaelyn Moore? theories about why this happened. And I'm also going to talk about a very similar case that recently happened in India. Some people are saying it's a copycat case, so I am curious to hear what you all think. But first, I want to shout out everyone who listened to our listener stories episode from last month and is currently mad at me because they were dog sitting for someone while they listened. I know Kat on Patreon is one of those people, but at least 10 others told me the same thing. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, it features a very harrowing story from someone who was dog sitting for their friend when she got the sense that she wasn't alone in the house. And I truly cannot believe how many of you were dog sitting for someone while you listened to that. I am so sorry. Listen, I fully believe the best way to listen to this show is to put yourself in
4:36 Kaelyn Moore? a spooky setting, like take a walk through the woods, light a candle in your home and turn down the lights. But I think feeling like you are inside one of the stories as it's happening is a little too terrifying. Anyways, thank you for letting me know that this show is the reason you couldn't sleep. And if an episode has ever particularly scared you, please let me know in the comments wherever you're listening. I really love hearing about that. And also, I wanted to mention, you can check out the bonus episode we did for April on the butterfly people of Joplin. That is, these supernatural beings that descended on the city of Joplin after the devastating tornado of 2011. That's available on Patreon and for Apple subscribers. So make sure you go check that out. All right,
5:19 Kaelyn Moore? let's dive back in. And as always, listener discretion is advised. If you'd ever like more information on the specifics of our listener discretion advisories, you can always check the description of each episode.
5:33 Kaelyn Moore? It took about 15 minutes for the constable from the Burari Police Force to arrive at the Chundawat apartment. In that time, the crowd of customers had quadrupled and more were still arriving. Everyone was confused and becoming more and more concerned. As the constable pushed his way through to reach the apartment door, he tried to reassure the onlookers and tell them to stay calm. But he had heard about what the neighbor had seen inside of the apartment, and he braced himself for what was to come. The door was unlocked from the inside. He stepped in and announced himself. Police, anybody home?
6:14 Kaelyn Moore? Nothing. A blank, total silence. The constable then took measured steps up to the first level.
6:25 Kaelyn Moore? At the top of the stairs, he froze. The scene waiting for him was so horrific, it knocked the wind out of him. In all of his years with the police, he had never seen anything this gruesome. And he would later tell a reporter at The Hindu that he could only look at the scene for 10 seconds. There, in front of him, three generations of the family, the 77-year-old matriarch, her three adult children, two of their wives, and their children, were dead. 11 people in total. But the scene was unlike anything the constable had ever witnessed. Most of the family was hanging in a neat line.
7:06 Kaelyn Moore? The cloth nooses made from brightly colored and patterned scarves had been tied to a metal grate in the ceiling. Stools stood next to their bodies. The family had been blindfolded, and their hands and feet were bound with wire. In another room, the older matriarch of the family was found lying on the floor next to her bed. She had a scarf tied around her neck in a noose shape, just like everyone else. The scene was so horrible that when a freelance journalist named Vishal heard the news, he didn't believe it. He thought it was a hoax. It wasn't until he got a text later that day that he knew it was real. Someone had actually sneaked into the family home to film the scene, and the video was already starting to go viral.
7:50 Kaelyn Moore? 11 family members, all found dead. In what looked like some sort of demented ritual, the journalist immediately got to work. Tapping out the details in a series of tweets, he was the one that broke the news to the general public, which caused the story to become an immediate national sensation. Everyone wanted to know, what happened to this family? And more importantly, who did it?
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9:18 Kaelyn Moore? Initially, the police treated this as a homicide. The way the bodies were found, each of them with their hands bound with wire behind their backs, gagged and blindfolded, it all strongly suggested that someone had done this to them. One officer thought that the family had been killed and then the bodies were maybe staged like this after the fact. One detail that supported this theory was the positioning of the grandmother. She was found one room over from the rest of the family, and instead of hanging, she was laying on the floor next to her bed. She had a scarf tied around her neck, just like everyone else. But when the scarf was removed, officers found bruising all around her neck, and they
10:00 Kaelyn Moore? felt like that looked like it had been made by a belt buckle, as if she was strangled and then her body was staged. However, as investigators were moving around the apartment... They found no indication of an intruder. If someone had done this to the family, you would think that they would find forced entry or signs of a struggle, but the apartment looked surprisingly undisturbed for what had happened to them. It was also hard to imagine that only one or two attackers could subdue 11 people at once. One officer said he thought it would have taken about two people per family member to subdue, kill, and stage each of them. But if you do the math, that meant perhaps 22 additional people
10:45 Kaelyn Moore? had been in the apartment, and it just didn't look like that was the case. The investigator also noticed that nothing of value was missing from the house. None of the family's jewelry had been taken. They were all still wearing rings and necklaces. So it really didn't look like robbery was a motive. And this really puzzled the investigators, right? One officer was so perplexed by the situation that he threw out another theory. What if the family wasn't murdered and they had died by collective suicide? "No, it couldn't be," another officer said. This family had everything going for them. Business was good, the kids were happy. Everything in their lives was trending positive.
11:29 Kaelyn Moore? The family actually used to be in a bad spot. Their business was failing around 10 years ago. But they had turned it around. And only two weeks ago, they had thrown this huge engagement party with all of their friends and family in attendance. To the cops, it just didn't add up to suicide. The police quickly figured out that the three adult children that had died in the family actually had an older sister, Sujata, who lived with her husband's family about 50 miles away. The police had notified her of the tragedy that morning, and she arrived at the apartment in Burari around midday, absolutely devastated. It was almost immediately clear that Sujata had no indication that this was coming for her family.
12:14 Kaelyn Moore? And as she arrives at the apartment, at least 5,000 people flood the surrounding streets, and the police were forced to set up barricades to hold back the crush of people.
12:26 Kaelyn Moore? And as the crowd continued to grow, people started climbing up on balconies and rooftops to get a look at what was happening. News cameras were following Sujata as she was escorted by officers through the chaos, and reporters were clamoring around her to get a statement. If you look at the news footage, she is visibly emotional, and she pleads with them. "Please, I have nothing to say. I've lost my whole family. They were good people, very good people." Sujata spoke with the police that afternoon, and that's when they told her that they were starting to consider what happened to her family a suicide. And once she heard this news, she shifted from being sad to being outright angry.
13:10 Kaelyn Moore? On her way out of the station, she looked directly into a news camera and said that there was absolutely no way that they would have done this to themselves. She was certain that something had happened to them, someone had killed them, and she accused the police of using suicide as a cover-up, hiding the truth to protect themselves. Her accusation rippled through the crowd of spectators, and it ignited a fresh wave of outrage. More people flocked to the house in Burari, sending a message to the police. They were demanding justice. They were demanding the truth. But no one was prepared for the reality. So one of the things that Sujata pointed to,
13:53 Kaelyn Moore? which she felt proved that this wasn't a suicide, was the engagement party that was just thrown for her niece who died with the family, Priyanka. Priyanka was 33 and set to get married at the end of the year. She was a senior executive at a prestigious software company. She was also gorgeous, she was in love, and she was about to marry the love of her life. It didn't make sense to Sujata that she had taken her life. Priyanka's mother was born into the Chundawat family, and after her husband died, she moved back with Priyanka into the family home with her two siblings and their children. And two weeks before the family was found dead, they had thrown the huge engagement party for Priyanka and her fiance.
14:38 Kaelyn Moore? Everyone in the family was there. The 77-year-old grandmother, her children that lived in the house, which was Priyanka's mother, her youngest brother, who was 47-year-old Lalit, and their middle sibling. Sujata even came back to town to celebrate, and plus, all of their friends were there. And as Sujata was retelling this story, she remembered that even though everyone was having fun and celebrating, her youngest brother Lalit looked a little off at the party. Typically, he was in a really good mood, and he acted like the leader of the family, a role that he had taken over when his father died in 2006. The family was so lost without their patriarch, named Bopal Singh.
15:24 Kaelyn Moore? He was the light of the family, the North Star, and he was universally loved by everyone around him, so much so that the whole neighborhood called him daddy. Once he had died, however, Lalit filled that role for the family, and he was often the one giving advice and guidance. But at the engagement party, he seemed pretty distant and withdrawn, like he had something on his mind. That information didn't really help the investigation, necessarily. That Lalit was a bit sad two weeks ago. And now with the eyes of India upon them and accusations of mishandling the case already swirling, the Burari Police Chief summoned every top cop in Delhi to the scene.
16:09 Kaelyn Moore? Officials decided to hand over the investigation to the crime branch, the equivalent of the FBI here in America. Everything would be done by the book. Every inch of the apartment needed to be scoured and photographed for evidence. They also had to transport the bodies from the crime scene to the morgue, which was an entire production that took hours. Police organized a caravan of 11 ambulances, one for each family member. They had to back each of the ambulances up to the door of the apartment one at a time, through the barricade of crowds, and do their best to keep the bodies shielded from view. The news channels documented the entire process with rooftop cameras.
16:51 Kaelyn Moore? One of them even had a helicopter trail the caravan all the way to the morgue. People were desperate to read the coroner's report to get any more information on what had happened. But then the report was released and the findings were even stranger than anyone had anticipated.
17:11 Kaelyn Moore? See, the coroner's autopsy report determined that the Chandawats had all died by hanging. The toxicology screen found no sign that they had been poisoned or sedated in any way. These findings ruled out the possibility that the family had been killed and their bodies staged after the fact. But here's where it gets really strange. Some of the body's hands had been tied behind their backs so tightly, the wire was digging into their skin. The coroner also found wads of cotton shoved in their ears, like to muffle out sound. And then, when the coroner went to remove the cloth gags that were tied around the
17:51 Kaelyn Moore? family's mouth, he noticed that two of the younger members of the family, both 15-year-old boys, had their mouths taped shut underneath. And that's when the police started getting the feeling that someone had done this to the family, and it was actually one of the bodies that held a really important clue.
18:14 Kaelyn Moore? The oldest of the adult children, 61-year-old Bhuvnesh, appeared to have fought against his bonds, trying to free himself, and he managed to work one of his hands loose. This was the sign of a struggle that had been absent from the crime scene itself. So investigators decided that they had to determine if there was anyone else in the apartment that night. And so they pulled the footage from the CCTV cameras in the alley outside. And luckily, one of the cameras had a direct view of the family's front door, and the recorded footage went back at least 72 hours. This became a vital piece of evidence, and it allowed the officers to see anyone coming or going, and they immediately reviewed it frame by frame.
18:59 Kaelyn Moore? According to the tape, a delivery boy dropped off an order of rotis, a thin flatbread, in the early evening, the day before the deaths. The police sat huddled around the computer going frame by frame, waiting to see the stranger who went into the apartment after this. But that stranger never came. No one outside the family ever entered the apartment until the morning of July 1st, when a concerned neighbor came to check on them. But that's not all the tape showed.
19:28 Kaelyn Moore? In a clear view of the camera, officers watched Lolit's wife, 15-year-old son, and 25-year-old nephew carry a set of newly purchased stools down the alley and into the apartment. And those appeared to match the stools found next to the bodies. The night before the deaths, at around 10:30 PM, Lolit's 15-year-old son came back outside alone. He rolled up the metal door of his father's plywood shop halfway, and he ducked inside. He came out a few minutes later, holding a bundle of wire. And then, he closed the metal door and went back up to the family apartment. He didn't look panicked. He didn't look fearful. He looked like a normal kid, just running out to grab something.
20:13 Kaelyn Moore? All of this, taken together, the investigators felt confident in ruling out an attack by an intruder. This wasn't a murder case. Whatever happened that night, the Chundawat family had done it to themselves. But why? It wasn't long before reporters started putting together their own theories. One of those reporters was Vishal Anand, the one who saw the video that someone had taken inside the apartment and first broke the story to the world. He was deeply invested in the Burari case, poring over crime scene photos, videos, witness testimony, all of it, when he noticed something bizarre.
20:54 Kaelyn Moore? Eleven Pipes. There were eleven pipes that jutted out from the outer wall of the Chundawat apartment, arranged in a few neat rows. Four of them extended straight out from the wall, seven were bent and curved downwards. Huh. It was just like the family, he thought. Four men and seven women. Then, Vishal realized where he recognized the pattern in the pipes from. The pipes on the outside of the wall were in the same position as the bodies hanging from the grate. At first, it didn't seem like much, but the more he looked into the photos, the more the number eleven showed up.
21:34 Kaelyn Moore? There were eleven windows in the apartment, eleven iron rods on the front door, and so immediately, he starts firing off articles about this coincidence, and this took the whole investigation in a very different direction. The general public started wondering if there was some kind of occult angle to the family. The number eleven was significant in Hinduism, after all, representing spiritual growth. Was this some kind of sick and twisted bastardization of that? Reporters decided that the family must have been following some occult guru, and they scoured the family's associates to try to uncover them. They even zeroed in on the man who installed the pipes' daughter after she was photographed
22:19 Kaelyn Moore? wearing red, the color of black magic. Her face was plastered everywhere after that, and she was labeled incorrectly as an occultist. And at the same time, the contractors who installed the Burari's pipes were trying to clear the air. The number eleven was just a coincidence. There was no occult meaning to the number of pipes they installed. But that would be nearly impossible to prove to the public. Because not long after this, a huge bombshell was discovered inside of the Chundawat's apartment. See, the family, like many Hindu families, had a prayer altar in their apartment.
22:59 Kaelyn Moore? And as investigators were re-examining the living space, they found fresh ashes in the sacrificial pyre, suggesting that the family had performed some kind of emergency ceremony or ritual on the night of June 30th, the night before their bodies were found. And one of the investigators got a hunch. He felt like there may have been a religious element to the deaths. And in his experience, those kinds of deaths usually came with some sort of note. But so far, they hadn't found anything in the apartment. And so he ordered the investigators to search every square inch for any written material.
23:42 Kaelyn Moore? And sure enough, sitting on a nearby shelf were some notebooks. Eleven of them in total.
23:52 Kaelyn Moore? They were diaries with date catalogued entries spanning back the last 11 years. And the most recent was from June 24th, just six days before the family died. The oldest entries were from September 2007, and entries had been made almost daily. And it would be these notebooks that would start painting a much bigger picture for investigators. One that illustrated the real terror that was happening inside of the Chandawat home. And it was much darker than any of the investigators could have imagined.
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25:37 Kaelyn Moore? The diary started about a year after the patriarch of the family, Bhopal Singh, passed away. I mentioned it earlier, but after he died, the family was incredibly lost. Eventually, Bhopal's son, Lalit, filled that role, but the diaries showed a rocky transition. Every entry provided the day's instructions for each member of the Chundawat family, dictating everything, from what meals to cook, to behavioral corrections, to major financial decisions. For example, one entry would mention that one of the grandchildren was spending too much time on their cellphone, and that behavior needed to be corrected. Another entry would talk about how two of the women in the family needed to make one of the others feel more loved.
26:20 Kaelyn Moore? Another went, "Be mindful of your mother's age and needs. If you are able to keep your parents happy, you are serving God's wishes." Investigators started to believe that, every morning, each member of the family checked the diary for their instructions, and that most of the instructions were coming from Lalit. And that's because a lot of these entries started holding him in the highest regard. One said, "If you want solutions to your problems, then you must follow Lalit's instructions." Another said, "Everything good that has allowed this family to prosper is through the actions of Lalit and his wife, Tina." But as the investigators carefully leafed through the pages, they noticed something
27:05 Kaelyn Moore? strange. There were different styles of handwriting throughout. At first, they believed Lalit was the one writing all of the instructions, but it became clear that at least three people had been writing in them. And handwriting analysis showed that the majority of the notebooks had been written by his two nieces, Priyanka and Nitu. Perhaps Lalit was giving them instructions each day about what the family needed to be doing, and they obeyed as he was now the head of the family. But how did Lalit go from the son stepping in to fill his father's shoes, to dictating what each person did every day? Well, the investigators started asking around the community if anyone knew Lalit very
27:49 Kaelyn Moore? well, and the story they started to piece together of him was very complicated.
27:56 Kaelyn Moore? It seemed from friends and neighbors that Lullet had an otherwise normal upbringing. That was, they said, until the accident. In high school, Lullet had been involved in a bicycle accident that left him with a traumatic head injury. His friends had previously known him as the life of the party, always cracking jokes. He did well in school, he was on track to go to college. But something changed after his head injury. He wasn't able to focus or read for long periods of time. He would fall asleep randomly, often in the middle of a conversation. His college plans were completely scrapped. And instead, he opened a plywood shop next door to the family grocery store.
28:38 Kaelyn Moore? He was just starting to get back on his feet when there was another incident. In 2003, Lullet was attacked by one of his suppliers, who he was in a dispute with at the time. They broke into his store, beat him up badly, and left him unconscious over a pile of plywood in the shop. Then, his attackers locked the door and set the building on fire. Lullet awoke to smoke and fire all around him. But he was able to still get to his feet and make it out of the store. He ran back to his family home, but just like the last accident had changed him forever, after the fire, Lullet was no longer the same person. He couldn't speak anymore.
29:23 Kaelyn Moore? His family believed that the smoke inhalation had permanently damaged his vocal cords. But doctors said that that wasn't really how it worked. He shouldn't have been left completely mute after the incident, unless, they suggested, it was psychological, stemming from trauma from the event. And yet, after that, Lullet never spoke, not even a single word, not to his wife, not to his son, and not even at his father's funeral, who passed away three years later. Lullet never spoke to any of the 10 other people that lived in his home with him, not even as they collectively grieved. That is, until one day.
30:08 Kaelyn Moore? A few days after Bopal's death, the family was gathered in front of their altar, participating in a group prayer. And suddenly, there was a deep voice in the back of the room, reciting the prayer. It almost sounded like Bopal's voice was filling the room from the afterlife. It was beautiful. It made the family emotional. And when they all turned around, they saw it was Lulit. He was finally able to speak again, except his voice had changed. It no longer sounded like it had before the incident. It sounded like his father's. The rest of the family just listened in shocked silence while Lulit finished the rest of the prayer. And when he was done, his mother declared in awe, Daddy has returned.
30:54 Kaelyn Moore? It seems like this moment had a profound impact on the family. In the midst of intense grief and loss, Lulit experienced a miracle, the return of his voice. And instead of suffering through the confusion, the family regained hope. Lulit claimed that Bopal appeared to him in a dream after his death. His father had told him to perform a puja, a kind of devotional prayer to recover his voice. He followed his father's advice, and it worked. He was finally able to speak again. And from that point on, Bopal continued to visit Lulit, and he gave him more instructions to follow, not just for Lulit, but for the entire family. And that's how the diaries started.
31:39 Kaelyn Moore? And maybe the strangest thing in all of this is that following Bopal's instructions actually helped the family, at least at first it did. Before his death, money had been really tight. They were living paycheck to paycheck. But the diary instructions really turned that around. They made the family more disciplined, and soon, they were able to open a second store. The children also started performing better in school. Priyanka found a great job. The family flourished, and to their friends and neighbors, it was all Lulit's doing as the new head of the household. But inside the family, they knew that Lulit was just a conduit, and Bopal was still their patriarch. But as the investigators kept reading the diaries,
32:23 Kaelyn Moore? the instructions that got the family focused and disciplined started becoming more concerning and controlling. The voice of the instructions seemed more harsh and serious than Bhopal Singh was ever known to be in his life. But the family continued to follow instructions, fully believing it was Bhopal speaking through Lulit. The later entries, though, started taking on a really concerning tenor. It seemed like Lulit really believed that Bhopal Singh was going to return to the family, like he was done speaking through Lulit, and he was ready to come back to the family and take his position as the patriarch. And then, on June 4th of 2018,
33:06 Kaelyn Moore? the last diary entry was written, dictating the instructions for what Lulit called "The Banyan Tree Ritual." In Hinduism, the banyan is considered sacred and holds a great deal of significance. Sometimes it's referred to as "The Tree of Life", and it can symbolize immortality, interconnectedness, and spiritual growth. But outside of the symbolism, the ritual had no other basis in Hindu practice. It was something Lulit had made up himself. And according to the diary, the ritual would reunite them with Bhopal Singh, who had been dutifully guiding them for the last 11 years. The entry was extremely detailed, even specifying that they should begin the ritual at 1 a.m.
33:50 Kaelyn Moore? Nothing should be visible. Use dim light. Eyes should be closed and properly blindfolded. Gag the mouth by tying a handkerchief. The bonds must be strong. You may or may not know what a banyan tree looks like, but one of their unique features is how they grow roots. Instead of growing out of the soil, banyan seedlings attach themselves to surrounding branches and trees, and then they stretch their roots down to the ground to reach the soil. As it grows, it releases dozens and dozens of vertical arms. So, this ritual was supposed to symbolize the banyan. Each member was a root suspended from the ceiling. The ritual was supposed to go on for seven consecutive days,
34:32 Kaelyn Moore? and no one outside the family could be in the apartment when it was performed. It required their total attention and focus.
34:41 Kaelyn Moore? God should feel your devotion. Keep the mind absolutely empty. Nothing but infinity. While standing at attention, imagine that the branches of the tree are entwining you. Perform the Banyan Tree Ritual with unity and determination. This will help repent for your mistakes. The diary also explained why the grandmother had been found in the next room over, lying on the floor. She was old, she was overweight, she wasn't physically capable of standing for that long. So instead of tying her noose to the grate in the ceiling, it was attached to the handle of a cabinet. By the time the bodies were discovered, that handle had broken off from her weight. According to the instructions, one person was responsible
35:24 Kaelyn Moore? for binding the hands and feet of the family. Lulit likely assumed this role, based on all of the evidence they had. While everyone else's hands were tied behind their back, his were actually tied in front, suggesting he had secured the cord himself. Do not panic while performing the Banyan Tree Ritual. The earth might shake, or the skies might tremble. Do not let this weaken your resolve. Convince the children to keep chanting. As long as the chanting continues, Lulit will protect each one of you.
35:57 Kaelyn Moore? After these notebooks came to light, investigators felt like they had mostly solved the case. They were no longer looking for a murderer or for an outside spiritual guru that had corrupted the family. No, that had come from within. Several reports that came out after this discovery compared the Chandavats to a cult. Lulit had positioned himself as the savior of sorts and enforced obedience from the other family members. And then he had convinced them to commit mass suicide. It had threads of Heaven's Gate or Jonestown. But unlike those two groups that had been studied and now are pretty well understood, investigators still had so many questions about the Chandavats, like the timing.
36:41 Kaelyn Moore? It seemed like Lulit had flipped a switch within the last few weeks of the diaries, like he had all of a sudden shifted gears. Another question was, did Lulit really believe that Bhopal Singh was speaking through him? Or was he simply manipulating the family into following him? And also, and maybe most importantly, did the family know they were going to die? By some accounts, it didn't seem like it. They maybe thought if they performed this ritual, they would survive and Bopal would be back. And as all of these questions started circulating, theories on why this happened started to arise.
37:22 Kaelyn Moore? So some people believed that when Lulit started speaking again holds an important clue. They think that this wasn't a miracle, that he chose that specific moment after Bopal's death to speak again, and that it was extremely calculated. If his vocal cords had been so damaged in the attack, whether by smoke inhalation or physical trauma, that he lost the ability to speak for years, then spontaneous healing kind of seems unlikely. Instead, the damage was probably short term. The heat and chemicals in a fire can cause some inflammation that takes a few weeks to resolve, but even once Lulit could speak again, he chose not to.
38:04 Kaelyn Moore? But why be calculated and manipulative in speaking if he did have the ability to? Well, some doctors believe that Lulit wasn't thinking right, and that his brain injury from the bicycle accident maybe clouded his mind. So there was a 2012 study that suggested a link in patients who suffered moderate to severe TBIs, that is traumatic brain injuries, and later developed a psychotic disorder. The study found that this was more prevalent in men, and the symptoms could develop anywhere from a year to 10 years after the brain injury occurred. The most common symptoms were delusions and auditory hallucinations. Patients were more likely to develop psychotic disorders if their TBI was associated with
38:48 Kaelyn Moore? cognitive impairments, most commonly in memory and executive functioning. And this study came out after Lulit had his TBI, so doctors wouldn't have known to necessarily check him for this. And besides that, we have no idea if this applied to Lulit, if he was hallucinating his father's voice, or if this was all an act. But whatever the truth is, he clearly reached a breaking point in June of 2018. But what caused it? That was always one of the big questions in this case. Why would a family that seemed to have everything going for them die by collective suicide? Unfortunately, the diaries didn't provide a clear answer for that either.
39:30 Kaelyn Moore? But it was theorized that Priyanka's engagement party might have been the catalyst. Even though Lulit was the one who had arranged the marriage and thrown the lavish party, perhaps it wasn't until he was standing in the room, surrounded by people making wedding plans, that reality sunk in for him. See, once Priyanka was married, she would move out of the apartment. And it's possible that he was afraid that her departure might destabilize the family. After all, she was a key part in the diary system. Remember, most of the entries were in her handwriting, dictated to her by Lulit. Or perhaps he was afraid that once she was outside of the apartment, living a life that wasn't governed by Bhopal's instructions,
40:14 Kaelyn Moore? she would have some sort of awakening. Like, maybe she would realize that it wasn't normal to live this way. And perhaps she would convince others in the family of this as well. Friends and relatives had remarked on how quiet Lulit was at the engagement party. He was distant. And the following week, he missed several days of work, claiming that he was sick. But he spent entire days in his room, sleeping. The last question that people had was, how could an entire family allow this to happen? If only one of them was leading the charge. And that person was divorced from reality. Especially when you think of how well-educated the family was. Priyanka had graduated college, she had an amazing job.
40:57 Kaelyn Moore? One of the other grandchildren was working towards a master's degree in forensic science. Well, there's a few theories about this. For one, the family's life did start improving because of Lulit's instructions. It was like they were constantly being positively reinforced that this was the absolute right thing for them. And that Lulit was a great new leader of the family and should be trusted pretty much under any circumstance. But another theory I found is actually something called "Folly of a Me." Maybe you're familiar with "Folly-adoo", where someone can, quote, "catch" another person's delusions? Well, "Folly of a Me" is when an entire family can catch one family member's delusions.
41:42 Kaelyn Moore? So it's not really a widely studied phenomenon, but I did find a 2010 paper by two researchers in India, Ashish Srivastava and H. A. Borkar. In their paper, they describe a family in India that's headed by the father, a 40-year-old with paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder. He believed that people in his community were trying to kill his family, which consisted of him, his wife, and their three children. Three years after the onset of his symptoms, his family also started to experience delusions and exhibit symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. He was eventually brought in for treatment, and within two months, the rest of the family members stopped showing symptoms,
42:26 Kaelyn Moore? even though they had never received any formal treatment. It seemed like being separated from the father was enough. And this is probably the closest case study we have to the Chandwats. It was another family in the region who shared the same beliefs and was also living with a patriarch with mental illness, though that is still alleged in the Chandwatt case technically. But the researchers brought up in their case study that this family was incredibly isolated. The father did not let his wife or children see anyone outside of the home. And they said that that was typical in cases of folly of a me. But we know that that wasn't the case for the Chandwats. They owned a business. They had friends, neighbors, and customers.
43:11 Kaelyn Moore? Some of them went to school. They had plenty of contact with the outside world, which makes folly of a me a little bit less likely.
43:21 Kaelyn Moore? When the case was closed, they were labeled as accidental deaths. It didn't really seem appropriate to call the deaths suicides, because it didn't seem like the family thought the ritual would kill them. But it wasn't really murder either, because it seemed like they had participated willingly. Once the truth of the Burari deaths was uncovered, the rabid demand for an explanation basically dried up. Once the shock wore off, it was seen as nothing more than bizarre tabloid fodder. And eventually, the tabloids moved on, without much consideration for the deeper questions. Like, how was the family able to hide this from everyone? Their friends, their neighbors, their relatives? For over a decade, these kids went to school, they had social media, they were living in
44:06 Kaelyn Moore? the modern age, and yet, it doesn't seem like any of them had ever questioned their lifestyle. Recent commentary on the case has highlighted an even simpler truth: there's such a strong cultural resistance towards most conversations about mental health, that it was actually easier to accept that Lalit's connection with Bobol Singh was a product of a divine blessing, rather than consider that he was showing symptoms of a psychological disorder. And because of that, even today, we don't really know the truth. Whether or not Lalit was actually having hallucinations, or if he was actually an opportunistic manipulator, we still don't know what his true motives were.
44:49 Kaelyn Moore? And as long as that reluctance to get to the bottom of this exists, some think that it leaves the door open for future similar tragedies. And just last year, in September of 2024, a father and his four daughters died by collective suicide in the area. However, unlike the Burari case, it seems like there were clear warning signs ahead of the tragedy. The father had been consumed by severe depression for the better part of a year following the death of his wife. The family was said to have been completely disconnected from the outside world. They stopped talking to their neighbors, they rarely left the house, and their bodies were only discovered when someone complained about the smell coming from their apartment.
45:32 Kaelyn Moore? Some also looked at that case as another tabloid headline, another salacious story similar to the Chandawats. But others said, no. This is a sign of mental illness, and if we don't take this seriously as a community, these kinds of stories are going to keep happening. And slowly but surely, over time, psychologists in India, like Rachana Jori, are trying to open people up more to conversations about mental health. Rachana is a professor at Ambedkar University, and she was actually interviewed in the Netflix documentary about this case. And she gave some of her thoughts on the mental health aspect of the Chundawat's death. And I hope for Rachana's sake and everyone else trying to speak up about mental health,
46:16 Kaelyn Moore? that they're able to make a real difference. That's all I have for you this week. I know this was a big, deep and dark case, but as always, I'm very curious to hear from you guys on what you think about this. You can also join me here next week as we jump from India and head over to Japan, where I'm going to tell you some ghost stories from Okinawa, ones that definitely kept me up at night. Specifically, ones actually that took place on a military base there. So you won't want to miss that. And before I leave, I actually quickly wanted to shout out Radio Nemo, who had me on for an interview recently. Jimmy Mack and Lindsay Lawler had me on to talk about How Heart Starts Pounding got started and how I come up with episodes.
46:58 Kaelyn Moore? You can find that on YouTube by searching Radio Nemo, Heart Starts Pounding. I'll see you all here with me in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters next week. And until then, stay curious. Ooh.
47:14 Kaelyn Moore? Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Abigail Cannon. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstarts pounding.com.
47:35 Kaelyn Moore? Do you want more darkly curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com backslash heartstarts pounding. But whatever you do, stay curious.
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