A 35-year-old man allegedly murdered 14 members of his family, including seven children, with a butcher’s knife before committing suicide outside India’s financial capital of Mumbai, police said yesterday.
The attack happened after family members gathered late on Saturday at one of their homes in Thane, about 32km from Mumbai, for a family function, police said.
“The attacker, Hasnin Anwar Warekar, hung himself after slitting the throats of all other family members, including his parents,” Thane police spokesman Gajanan Laxman Kabdule said.
The sole survivor of the attack — Warekar’s sister — was taken to hospital after neighbors heard her screaming for help after midnight and alerted police.
“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 attacked his family after apparently lacing their food with a sedative, according to several local media reports.
However, the Indian Express newspaper said the chartered accountant stabbed his victims after they went to bed, having all decided to spend the night at the house.
“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, was quoted saying.
Kabdule said he could not confirm whether the victims had been sedated, saying investigators were awaiting medical test results.
TV footage showed paramedics lifting bodies wrapped in sheets in to the back of an ambulance, as crowds 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.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in