The morning of horror
July 1, 2018. A neighbor had grown concerned when the usually punctual Chundawat family shop hadn’t opened that morning.
The family, known for their warmth and reliability, had been a cornerstone of the local community for years.
When their friendly greetings and business as usual were suddenly absent, people started talking. Something wasn’t right.
The neighbor decided to investigate. The doors to the house weren’t locked. He stepped inside, calling out, but no one answered.
As he climbed the stairs, his calls turned to silence. What greeted him next would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Ten bodies hung in a row from the ceiling of a narrow hallway on the second floor. Their mouths were taped shut, their hands and feet bound, and their faces covered with cloth.
Each person had a blindfold, as if they had willingly walked into the dark. In the adjacent room lay the eleventh victim: Narayani Devi, the 77-year-old family matriarch, found strangled and lifeless on the floor.
The house, once filled with life, had become a tableau of death.
A family of eleven
The Chundawat family—also known as the Bhatias—was an ordinary Indian family by all accounts.
Narayani Devi was the head of the household, having raised her three children after her husband’s death decades ago. Her eldest son, Bhuvanesh, was 50, and her youngest, Lalit, was 45.
Between them was her daughter, Pratibha, 57, who had been widowed and lived in the house with her 33-year-old daughter, Priyanka.
The rest of the family included Bhuvanesh’s wife, Savita, and their three children, as well as Lalit’s wife, Tina, and their 15-year-old son, Dhruv.
They were hardworking and well-respected in their community. They ran a thriving grocery store and a plywood shop.
Neighbors described them as cheerful and united—a family whose bonds seemed unbreakable.
And yet, here they were, found dead in what looked like a carefully orchestrated ritual. How could a family of 11 meet such a gruesome end, with no sign of external intrusion or robbery?
The diaries of doom
When police arrived at the scene, they expected to find clues—perhaps evidence of foul play, a robbery gone wrong, or even signs of poisoning.
But what they found instead were diaries. Eleven of them, meticulously kept over the years, lying in various parts of the house.
The diaries were not just casual notes; they were a chilling blueprint for what had unfolded.
Written primarily in Lalit’s handwriting, the entries detailed rituals, instructions, and beliefs that seemed to drive the family’s every move in the months leading up to their deaths.
The writings spoke of salvation, of a better life, of unity—and of something extraordinary that was about to happen.
One entry read: “The human body is temporary, and by following the ritual, we will attain something greater. Don’t be scared.”
Another detailed the specifics of the ritual that led to their deaths: tying their hands and blindfolding themselves, following steps that seemed oddly mundane yet horrifying in their precision.
The most chilling part? The diaries suggested that the family believed they would survive the ritual and be saved.
The shadow of Lalit: the mind behind the madness
The investigation soon turned its focus to Lalit Chundawat, the youngest son, who appeared to be the family’s spiritual anchor—or perhaps, its undoing.
Lalit had reportedly become deeply religious after surviving a traumatic incident years earlier, during which he narrowly escaped death.
According to relatives and neighbors, he had started claiming that his father’s spirit communicated with him, guiding him on matters of family and faith.
The diaries, too, referenced these supposed instructions from Lalit’s deceased father, urging the family to perform the rituals to achieve salvation and prosperity.
It seemed Lalit’s influence over the family was profound—so much so that they followed his instructions without question, even when it led them to their deaths.
Psychologists later speculated that Lalit might have been suffering from a delusional disorder, and the family’s blind trust in him could be attributed to a condition known as shared psychosis, or folie à deux—when one person’s delusion spreads to others in close proximity.
But what made the case even more disturbing was the collective belief that seemed to bind the family together.
Eleven people, spanning three generations, had participated willingly.
Even Priyanka, whose engagement had been celebrated just weeks before, followed the ritual without protest.
What kind of power had Lalit wielded to convince an entire family to take such a step?
A haunted house and unanswered questions
The house at Burari quickly became the stuff of nightmares.
Despite the police ruling out foul play and labeling the case a mass suicide driven by shared delusion, questions lingered.
Why had no one in the family reached out for help? Why did none of the victims resist, even as the ritual took such a dark turn? And most hauntingly, did the family truly believe they would survive?
Neighbors and relatives, too, struggled to make sense of the tragedy.
The Chundawats had shown no signs of distress in the days leading up to their deaths. Priyanka had been excited about her wedding. Lalit and Bhuvanesh had been seen laughing and working at their shop just the day before.
How does a seemingly happy family transform into participants in their own deaths?
To this day, the house remains vacant, its windows shuttered. Locals avoid walking too close, claiming it emanates an eerie energy.
“You can feel it when you pass by,” said a neighbor. “It’s as if the house itself remembers what happened.”
The legacy of the Burari deaths
The Burari deaths are not just a story of tragedy—they are a mirror reflecting society’s deepest fears and flaws.
The case highlighted the dangers of unchecked beliefs, the stigma around mental health, and the vulnerabilities that can exist even in seemingly strong families.
While the Netflix documentary House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths brought renewed attention to the case, it also left viewers grappling with the same questions that have haunted investigators, psychologists, and the Chundawat family’s neighbors.
Was this simply a case of shared delusion, or was there something more sinister at play? Could the tragedy have been prevented if someone had noticed the warning signs earlier?
And, most chillingly, how many more families are walking a similar path, their struggles hidden behind closed doors?
As the years pass, the Burari deaths remain a chilling reminder of how the line between reality and belief can blur—and how even the closest families can be undone by secrets that fester in the dark.
Holy shit. People turning to religion after surviving a traumatic event is nothing new, my mum became the same way after beating cancer, but I wish people had more readily available options to seek mental health counselling afterwards, to make sure their trauma doesn’t lead to delusions (faith-based or otherwise). They likely fully believed they’d all survive and continue living with some granted supernatural benefits, since the daughter was still planning to go on with her wedding. Also, I wonder if the matriarch was the only person who objected to the ritual, and got strangled by her own family as a result… Maybe the relationships in that family weren’t as great as it seemed, and there was an underlying reason why the son who got so deep into a cult-ish delusion wanted to single out his mother as the only one who doesn’t get to join the ritual and be reborn? We may never know for sure, and the scariest part is, no family is safe from something like this happening, they were just ordinary people. Please, if you’ve had a traumatic event happen to you, seek professional counselling if you have the resources. Finding your escape in religion might help, or it might make it worse, like in this case.