As many as nine people of the same family were found dead in India’s Maharashtra on Monday which police suspect to be a case of a suicide pact.
The victims have been identified as brothers Popat Vanmore (56), and Dr Manik Vanmore - their mother, wives, and four children
The bodies were found in two different houses of the brothers, located 1.5 Km apart, in Mhaisal village in Maharashtra’s Sangli, over 350 km from Mumbai, reports NDTV.
A preliminary probe suggests the brothers had heavily borrowed money from different people, according to police.
It is suspected they might have consumed poisonous substances to end their lives, they added.
Popat Vanmore was a teacher and Manik Vanmore worked as a veterinary doctor.
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The incident brings back horrors of Delhi's Burari mass suicide in 2018 when 11 members of the same family killed themselves. It is now the subject of a Netflix docuseries.
"Prima facie, it looks that the family members of the two brothers have ended their lives. As per information received so far, both the brothers had borrowed money from various people. We are trying to establish the sequence of events as both the spots (houses where bodies were found) are 1.5km away from each other," Manoj Kumar Lohiya, Inspector General (Kolhapur range) told NDTV.
According to police, the matter came to light when a girl from the village had gone to Manik Vanmore's house to find out why nobody had come to fetch milk from them as it was a daily routine, and found the bodies.
The police said six bodies were found in Manik Vanmore's house - his own, those of his wife, mother, daughter, son, and nephew (son of Popat Vanmore), while Popat Vanmore, his wife, and daughter's bodies were found in the latter's residence, NDTV reports.
The police also found suicide notes from both locations and are analysing them, says Inspector General Lohiya.
"Though it looks like a suicide pact, we are investigating the case from all angles as it is a serious incident," he added.
Even though it is being suspected that they poisoned themselves, the cause of death can be ascertained after an autopsy, he said.
