3 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Mar 7, 2026 01:20 PM IST
According to the police, the sisters were found dead and their mother unconscious at their residence in Malviya Nagar on Monday evening. (Source: File)
A very caring mother who would always stay around her daughters and hardly step out of the house — this was how neighbours of Sunita Arora, who is suspected to have killed both her daughters earlier this week before attempting to die by suicide, described her on Friday. To them, the allegations of murder came as a shock.
“I know their family. They are all very nice people. They have been living here for a long time. I think I heard someone fighting in the evening … the incident was very unfortunate and shocking,” said Subhash (79), who lives a few hundred metres away from Sunita’s house in South Delhi’s Malviya Nagar.
Her house lies amidst the dense cluster of multi-storey builder floors in the locality. Throughout the day on Friday, relatives showed up.
“She loved her daughters. She was very caring … she would always be around them. She hardly ever stepped out. I think the couple [Sunita and her husband] used to fight,” said 52-yea-old Lalit, another neighbour.
According to the neighbours, Sunita’s husband Sudhir Arora owned a clothing shop in South Delhi and their daughters — Radhika and Gunisha — were pursuing BEd and LLB, respectively.
“Sunita kept to herself. No one could even think that she would do this,” Lalit added.
“Everything was good between the couple till Covid. They used to go on trips together. I don’t know what went wrong later,” he said.
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According to their neighbours, Sudhir’s mother, sister and others live on different floors of the same building as them.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Anant Mittal on Friday said the motive behind the murders was yet to be ascertained. “We are waiting for the woman to give her statement after recovering. The motive and the sequence of events are yet to be ascertained,” he said.
According to the police, the sisters were found dead and their mother unconscious at their residence in Malviya Nagar on Monday evening. Meanwhile, sources said crushed naphthalene balls and strips of used bandage were recovered from the spot.
Police said a call was received at Malviya Nagar police station around 6:10 pm and officers were told that the residents of a house in the area were neither opening the door, nor responding despite repeated attempts by their relatives. A police team rushed to the spot and found the door locked from inside. Upon entering the house by force, they discovered the bodies of the two sisters in separate rooms.
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Officers said one of the bodies was found with a pillow placed over the face, and the other had a ligature mark around the neck. Sunita, meanwhile, was rushed to AIIMS.
Nirbhay Thakur is a Senior Correspondent with The Indian Express who primarily covers district courts in Delhi and has reported on the trials of many high-profile cases since 2023.
Professional Background
Education: Nirbhay is an economics graduate from Delhi University.
Beats: His reporting spans the trial courts, and he occasionally interviews ambassadors and has a keen interest in doing data stories.
Specializations: He has a specific interest in data stories related to courts.
Core Strength: Nirbhay is known for tracking long-running legal sagas and providing meticulous updates on high-profile criminal trials.
Recent notable articles
In 2025, he has written long form articles and two investigations. Along with breaking many court stories, he has also done various exclusive stories.
1) A long form on Surender Koli, accused in the Nithari serial killings of 2006. He was acquitted after spending 2 decades in jail. was a branded man. Deemed the “cannibal" who allegedly lured children to his employer’s house in Noida, murdered them, and “ate their flesh” – his actions cited were cited as evidence of human depravity at its worst. However, the SC acquitted him finding various lapses in the investigation. The Indian Express spoke to his lawyers and traced the 2 decades journey.
2) For decades, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has been at the forefront of the Government’s national rankings, placed at No. 2 over the past two years alone. It has also been the crucible of campus activism, its protests often spilling into national debates, its student leaders going on to become the faces and voices of political parties of all hues and thoughts. The Indian Express looked at all court cases spanning over two decades and did an investigation.
3) Investigation on the 700 Delhi riots cases. The Indian Express found that in 17 of 93 acquittals (which amounted to 85% of the decided cases) in Delhi riots cases, courts red-flag ‘fabricated’ evidence and pulled up the police.
Signature Style
Nirbhay’s writing is characterized by its procedural depth. He excels at summarizing 400-page chargesheets and complex court orders into digestible news for the general public.
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