A 35-year-old man yesterday killed 14 members of his family including six children with a butcher’s knife before committing suicide near Mumbai, with police baffled about a motive for the attack.
The grisly murders occurred after Hasnin Anwar Warekar and his extended family gathered late on Saturday at their home in Thane, about 27 km from Mumbai, for a family function, police officers said.
“The attacker, Hasnin Anwar Warekar, hung himself after slitting the throats of all other family members including his parents,” Gajanan Laxman Kabdule, a police spokesman in Thane said.
“He used a big knife. He killed his parents, his sisters and his sisters’ children. He slit their throats,” Kabdule said.
The sole survivor of the attack - Warekar’s sister - was taken to hospital after neighbours heard her screaming for help after midnight and alerted police.
Neighbours were forced to open a window to rescue the woman after the assailant allegedly locked all escape routes from the house before carrying out the attacks, according to media reports.
“We still haven’t been able to speak with the attacker’s 21-year-old sister, the lone survivor of the attack, who is in deep trauma at a city hospital,” Kabdule said.
Warekar, an accountant who worked for a private firm in Mumbai, was able to carry out the attacks after lacing the food at the gathering with a sedative, according to several media reports.
But the Indian Express newspaper said he stabbed his victims after they went to bed, having all decided to spend the night at the house in Thane.
“Prima facie evidence suggests that the accused bolted all the doors of the house and murdered his family while they were asleep with a knife that we found near his body,” Ashutosh Dumbre, joint commissioner of Thane police, said.
Kabdule said he could not confirm whether the victims had been sedated, saying investigators were awaiting medical test results.
Footage showed men carrying bodies wrapped in sheets from the house to a waiting ambulance, as crowds and police gathered outside the white-walled home.
Kabdule said details of the attack “are still sketchy” along with the motive.
According to the Press Trust of India news agency, a property dispute was behind the killings, but Dumbre said initial investigations have so far found no trigger for such an “extreme step”.
“In our inquiry so far, no one has yet been able to give the reason for this,” Dumbre told the ABP news channel.
“He worked with a private company in Mumbai. There were no known financial troubles or disputes and now we are hoping that the lone survivor can tell us something about the trigger,” he said.
Kaif Rizwan Warekar, the killer’s cousin, is in complete shock.
“Hasnin was a man with a golden heart, and used to love his family and live for them.”
He was getting almost Rs100,000 salary a month, which is one of the reasons his friends and neighbours are finding it difficult to think financial problems could be a reason for the killings.
Mohamed Zain Mohamed Islam, a neighbour said: “The entire family was very decent and a happy go lucky family. Hasnin along with his sisters came to see us last night as he had invited the entire family for a get-together.”
His uncle Rizwan Warekar said: “Around 3am, the neighbours came in to say that there is someone screaming from the house, so we rushed to the house and saw Suviya crying for help and shouting that the brother has killed everyone. So we immediately got her out of house and informed the police and then rushed her to the Titan hospital.”
Rizwan added: “Such things were never expected from Hasnin as from his childhood, he was very simple and a good person with a closed knit of friends. He used to go office, and offer namaz five times a day. A person who used to feel scared while seeing blood can never make such mistakes.”