The Burari deaths
On 1 July 2018 eleven members of one family were found dead in their house in Burari, Delhi; diaries showed they had performed a ritual that the youngest son said was dictated by his dead father's spirit.
2018 CE · 28.75, 77.19 · status: official
The account
Lalit Chundawat had for years claimed to receive instructions from his father, who died in 2007. Police and a 'psychological autopsy' concluded it was an accidental group death during a ritual driven by shared psychosis.
The researched reading
One of the clearest documented cases of shared delusion: a family followed the “voice” of a dead father, channelled by one son, into a ritual they expected to survive.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Perception, memory or mind | 40% | Eleven years of diaries show Lalit Chundawat claiming his dead father spoke through him and the family obeying; psychiatrists and the CBI’s psychological autopsy pointed to shared psychotic disorder, and an entry describing how they would untie each other afterwards suggests they did not expect to die. |
| Undetermined | 30% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
| A cultural story | 22% | The diaries framed the deaths as a devotional “kriya” guided by an ancestor, drawing on Hindu ritual and ancestor beliefs that gave the father’s “voice” authority within a religious family. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 4% | A surviving brother argued it was murder, but post-mortems found no struggle and the diaries matched the scene; no outsider staging is supported. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 2% | An undiagnosed neurological or medical condition behind Lalit’s hallucinations of his father cannot be ruled out; it would still be a medical cause, not a spirit. |
| Something in the surroundings | 1% | Nothing in the house points to gas or other environmental causes. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 1% | The father’s spirit is attested only by Lalit’s own claims. |
Official position: Delhi Police and the CBI psychological autopsy concluded it was an accidental group death during a ritual driven by shared psychosis.