A senior officer with the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s premier external intelligence agency, allegedly battered his wife and two children to death before committing suicide on Saturday.
Ananya Chakrabarty, 52, was found hanging from a ceiling fan while his 43-year-old wife Jaishree, 17-year-old son Arnab and 12-year-old daughter Disha were found dead in an adjacent room of their government residence in south Delhi’s Sadiq Nagar at around 4pm, the police said.
“The reason behind the step is yet to be ascertained but prima facie it seems that he first killed his wife and children before hanging. There seems to be no foul play or third-party involvement,” said the officer.
On arriving at the residence, the police team broke the door down to find Chakrabarty hanging from a ceiling fan. The bodies of his family members, evidently battered to death were recovered from an adjacent room along with a hammer.
“We were informed about the incident by a relative who went to visit the family on Saturday evening and found their second-floor house locked from the inside,” said a senior police officer.
The relative realised something was amiss after he was unable to get through to anyone in the family since Saturday morning. The family was last seen by neighbours on Friday afternoon.
A field officer posted in the Indian Cabinet Secretariat, Chakrabarty was posted in one of RAW’s classified branches involved in communications. He had been in Delhi for the last five to six years and due for a promotion as well as a foreign posting, according to the RAW.