Rahul Tiwari was found hanging, while his wife & 3 daughters were found with their throats slit. Police suspect Tiwari killed them & hung himself, but some family members blame his brothers-in-law.
When Saroj Devi’s daughter Suman when to call their neighbours, the Tiwaris, Saturday morning, she was in for a shock.
“She returned screaming and told us Rahul (Tiwari) was hanging from an iron angle (of a vent) in the house. She did not enter room and simply rushed back,” said Saroj, who was hosting her daughter-in-law’s baby shower Saturday, and recalled how everything had seemed normal when she had invited the Tiwaris for the function Friday evening.
What Suman has seen, however, was only a fragment of the tragedy that had engulfed the Tiwari family. Whereas 42-year Rahul Tiwari, a cattle trader, was found hanging in the family’s rented accommodation in Khagalpur village, a mere 35 kilometres from the Uttar Pradesh city of Prayagraj, the bodies of his wife and three daughters — 38-year-old Priti, 12-year-old Mahi, 8-year-old Pihu and 2-year-old Pohu — were recovered lying in a pool of blood, with their throats slit, when police reached the spot, said Kanchan Singh, another neighbour.
While police suspect that Tiwari killed his wife and daughters and then hung himself, some members of Tiwari and his wife’s families have brought in allegations of murder against two of Priti’s brothers — Pintu and Chandrashekhar — pointing at a long standing property dispute between them. Interestingly, though both Tiwari’s family and a sister of Priti’s, haver accused her brothers of being in the wrong — blaming them of forcefully evicting the family from their house in Kaushambi last year and usurping the property — her mother has blamed Tiwari of trying to appropriate his in-laws’ property.
“Prima facie, Rahul has killed his daughters and his wife first, and later hanged himself. It is yet to be ascertained whether the act was committed under influence or in consciousness. Viscera from all the bodies has been preserved and post mortem has been conducted, which has confirmed asphyxia due to ante-mortem hanging as cause of his death,” said a source in Prayagraj police.
Interestingly, police claimed to have recovered a suicide note — purportedly written by Tiwari — from the spot, which also allegedly blamed 11 people — including his in-laws — of harassment and claimed his two brothers-in-law had visited the place Friday night.
However, members of Tiwari’s family have claimed that the deceased could barely write and would usually take help from his children for maintaining business records and for even operating his phone.
