Police in Greater Noida have arrested three relatives of a man who was found dead at home along with his wife and three children, and now say the family is suspected to have died by suicide rather than from food poisoning. The three, two of the man’s sisters and a brother-in-law, are accused of abetment to suicide, police said on Sunday, October 18.
Mahesh, 37, his wife Lalita, 35, and their children, two sons aged 11 and 3 and a daughter aged 7, were found dead on Saturday morning inside their house in Nagla Shri Padam village, which falls under the Rabupura police station.
A voice note and a property dispute
Investigators say they found an audio recording on Mahesh’s phone in which he allegedly held the three relatives responsible for what happened to the family. According to a senior police officer, he had recorded it on another phone and sent it to himself. Police said their preliminary inquiry points to a long-running property dispute as the likely trigger.
Based on what neighbours and relatives told them, police said one of Mahesh’s sisters, who lives in Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh, had allegedly persuaded their mother to transfer the house that Mahesh shared with her into the sister’s name, and that he had been deeply upset after learning of it. All three accused live in Delhi.
The case was registered late on Saturday night on a complaint from Lalita’s brother, who accused the three of harassing the couple. The Gautam Buddh Nagar police commissionerate said the Rabupura police had registered a case under the relevant sections and arrested two women and a man. Police have stressed that the allegations are still being examined and that the role of the accused in the deaths has not yet been established.
Why the food-poisoning theory was dropped
When the bodies were found, police initially suspected food poisoning because the family had eaten a meal and drunk tea the night before after returning from a local fair. Post-mortem examinations, however, found signs of poisoning, and doctors preserved viscera samples from all five for forensic testing. Officers also said CCTV footage from outside the house showed nobody entering or leaving during the night.
Relatives said Mahesh mostly worked as a daily-wage labourer and sometimes as a delivery partner for online platforms, after a shop he once ran had closed down.
What happens next
The exact cause of death will be confirmed only after the forensic laboratory reports the results of the viscera tests, the Rabupura station house officer said. Police are also examining the voice note, the property records and the family’s circumstances in the days before the deaths, and officers have been questioning the three accused.
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