Family battered, burnt to death; cops clueless

8220;I have never seen or heard of a similar incident. The brutality is unprecedented,8221; says constable Nagendra Kumar, who is keeping vigil on the school teacher8217;s charred and meagre belongings.

Ramesh Chandra Varun 39 used to teach Hindi in the Nangloi Government High School. He also gave private tuitions to 8220;earn a little more money8221;. Four months ago, he shifted to a one-room house in Adhyapak Nagar along with his wife, Vimla 32 and two daughters 8211;Preeti 7 and Arti 5.

His neighbours say that if he had ever made any enemies 8211; and he wasn8217;t the kind 8212; he didn8217;t make them here in the past four months. 8220;Yet, sometime in the night yesterday, they were killed. Around 4 am, I saw smoke bellowing from their house and alerted others,8221; says a woman from the colony.

However, the school teacher8217;s neighbour, milk-seller Gajender Singh, who lives in the adjoining room, says he heard and saw nothing till the other residents of the colony woke him up.

The residents then went into the one-room house, past the charred doors 8212; which were unlocked 8212; and spotted Vimla8217;s charred body on the floor. Her hands were tied behind her back and her mouth was gagged. A heap of clothes atop her were still burning.

8220;The room was full of smoke and the power supply had been disconnected. Some of us tried to control the fire, while others went to call the police,8221; says another resident.

When the police lit a gas-operated lamp and looked around the soot-covered room,they spotted a gas cylinder next to the only bed-box in the room. The regulator was turned on and the open end of the pipe was leading into the bedbox.

Inside, they found the bodies of Varun and his daughters. Each of them had been strangled and battered with bricks and an electric iron. Varun had also been stabbed in the abdomen with a broken bottle and his daughters8217; necks had been slit with a sharp object.

The police are convinced that assailants were acquaintances. Some of the residents also recall spotting Varun chatting with some men on the terrace of his one-storey rented house around 11 pm yesterday. 8220;They were having a drink,8221; says Sunil, another neighbour

A senior official, while attempting a reconstruction of the possible course of events, says: 8220;The murders probably took place after midnight. First, they seem to have killed Varun by strangling him. Later, they stabbed him with the broken bottle. His wife and daughters were probably killed in their sleep 8212; Vimla on the folding cot and thegirls on the bed.8221; The pillows and mattress were found splattered with blood. Pieces of glass were also found scattered on the bed.

8220;It seems that after killing all of them,8221; adds DCP west Uday Sahay, 8220;the assailants placed a heap of clothes on Vimla and set her afire. The folding cot on which she was lying was reduced to ashes. Then they dragged the gas cylinder from the kitchen to the bedroom and put the pipe inside the bedbox, probably hoping that the fire would spread and the house, with the family, would be reduced to ashes.8221;