5 including 4 women of a family stabbed to death

New Delhi, Oct 8: Five persons, including four women of a family and a security guard, were stabbed to death in the early hours of Saturday in Shahdara’s Mansarovar Park area. The police are yet to ascertain the motive and identify the killers.

The victims, identified as Urmila Jindal (82), her daughters Sangeeta Gupta (56), Nupur Jindal (48), Anjali Jindal (38), and security guard Rakesh (42), were found dead at their residential complex 1/561 on Grand Trunk Road where they lived with seven families, all of whom are relatives. Urmila used to live on the first floor of the residential complex with her daughters.

Around 7 a.m., when a few of the relatives stepped out for a morning walk in the park inside the complex, they saw Rakesh lying lifeless near the staircase with multiple stab injuries on the throat. The family immediately called the police who reached the spot. Bodies of the women were found nearly an hour later.

“After we called the police, we needed to move the cars parked outside [the residential complex], so we went to the first floor to ask Sangeeta or Anjali for the car keys. That’s when we saw all four of them lying in a pool of blood in one of their rooms,” said Urmila’s nephew Rakesh Jindal, adding that two of the bodies were on the bed and the other two on the floor.

Claiming that the motive behind the murders was robbery, the family said that when they visited the room where the women were found dead, they saw the almirahs open and articles lying around. “The motive is obviously theft because their cupboards were open and the belongings were on the floor. So far we don’t know what’s missing because we weren’t allowed inside the room after the police reached,” said the deceased octogenarian’s nephew.

Initial news reports alleged that the motive behind the murder is a property dispute among the family, which the nephew and other relatives denied.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara) Nupur Prasad said that the police are investigating the murder from all angles, including the property dispute and robbery attempt. “It has come to the fore that the family was trying to dispose of some property. Also, though the almirahs were open, the jewellery the women were wearing was intact; the laptop and phone were also lying there. The entry was friendly,” she said.

According to the victims’ relatives, Sangeeta had been staying with her mother for the past 20 years after her husband passed away while Nupur was mentally disturbed and Anjali chose not to get married. Urmila’s husband, Ram Krishan Jindal, died a natural death a few years ago. The couple had a son who died at the age of four.