Three Found Dead in South Delhi House

: Three young men were found dead under mysterious circumstances in a sublet room in South Delhis Sewa Nagar on Thursday afternoon.The police say the trio died due to burns and asphyxiation caused by an accidental fire. The families of the victims, however, suspect that they were murdered.

The deceased have been identified as Sandeep, Ganesh, and Gaurav, all in their twenties. A police officer said that the men were dead at least 48 hours before the matter came to light.The one-room set where the bodies were found is where Sandeep lived with his family members, all of whom were out of Delhi, at the time of the incident.

Sandeeps father, Santa Bahadur, told The Hindu that it was around 12-30 p.m. that Ganeshs wife Deepa visited the house to check on her husband who had not spoken to her since leaving home on March 28 and had his phone switched off.

He had told her that he would be joining the other two at Sandeeps room. She went up to the terrace where the room is but repeated knocks went unanswered. Deepa got suspicious and climbed over a small barrier which is adjacent to the second door of the house, said Mr.

Bahadur at the crematorium where the last rites of the trio were performed on Friday.Deepa raised an alarm and informed the police as well as the landlady, a railway employee who had sublet the room to Sandeeps family for a rent of Rs. 3,000 a month.

A relative who reached the house also captured a video in which the bodies of the three could be seen with burn marks. A police team rushed the men to the Safdarjung Hospital where they were declared dead. The post-mortem conducted subsequently at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences established that the three died in a fire that had broken out accidentally, said a police officer.

The video, however, captures red spots on the floor, what appears to be blood marks. The officer said, attributing to doctors, that it was some other body fluid which is ejected when someone is burnt.The police said that the three were smoking bidis and joints, which could have ignited the synthetic clothes, the foam mattress, and other combustible objects in the room, and the resulting fire trapped the trio.

Also, since the bodies were discovered much later, medical tests couldnt establish whether they the trio had consumed alcohol or not. The families said that Sandeep was threatened by the landladys sons for inviting guests at home repeatedly. No case has been registered, and inquest proceedings have been initiated.