"Aditi is a very talented girl, I should say, was a talented girl..."
RK Mathur trails off before he picks up his train of thought again. A retired employee, living with his wife in Uppal Southend in Sector-49 in Gurugram, Mathur finds himself in the middle of a sudden tragedy, and a confusing displacement of tenses.
Just days ago, on Monday, 1 July 2019, his next-door neighbour Prakash Singh was found dead along with his wife and two children. Singh, a 50-year-old former R&D head of Sun Pharma, was found hanging from a ceiling fan in the drawing room of their three-bedroom home, just next to the main door. Inside, his 22-year-old daughter Aditi Prakash was found on her blood-soaked bed. His wife Sonu Singh and 14-year-old son Aditya Prakash were found lying on the floor. Their four dogs were lying beside the bodies, barking until the police and neighbours broke in. In one night, an entire family was wiped out.
The autopsy report spoke of a brutal assault. Sonu, Aditi and Aditya’s bodies bore deep knife wounds, while Prakash’s death was due to hanging. A note was discovered in the pockets of Singh which said “I am completely failed taking my family along with me. I am responsible for this. No one else.” (sic)
Sonu’s sister Seema Arora has registered an FIR under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code. The police maintains that they are treating the crime as a murder and the investigation is ongoing.
But who were the Singhs, living in Uppal Southend in Sector-49 in Gurgaon?
The ‘Doctor Sahab’ Who Loved His Plants…
Prakash Singh, known as “Doctor sahab” to most, loved gardening. The verandah in front of his house is filled with plants, and he loved tending to them. Living a busy life otherwise meant he would only return in the evenings; Singh had quit his job about one-and-a-half months ago. He had a successful career in the pharma industry, and it’s been reported that he had bought three properties, including in his hometown Varanasi. Ostensibly, Prakash Singh and his family were financially well-off; Singh’s wife Sonu was running four schools in Gurugram. Speaking to The Times of India, ACP (Sadar) Aman Yadav has said that the extended family have not been able to shed any light on “what was troubling Singh.”
Speaking to The Quint on condition of anonymity, the maid working in Singhs’ house concurred. “I had no idea something like this was going to happen. There was nothing like that, kuch nahin tha.” She had last visited the family on Saturday, two days before the murders took place. “Everyone was fine, I made food for the family in the evening, took leave from the family, and left”
When she reached the house on Monday to work, there was a crowd in front of the Singhs’ home. She was asked to climb in through a side-window, mainly because the family’s four dogs recognised her and wouldn’t attack. She entered the house and saw bloodied feet. “Mujhe toh chakkar hi aa gaya, main toh pehli baar hi dekhi thi yeh sab.” (I fainted after seeing this, I hadn’t seen anything like this before.) The family she saw on Saturday were all dead. The Times of India reports that the police believe that after murdering his family, Singh covered the bodies, collected their mobile phones, filled a container with water and submerged the phones, washed his hands, and then hung himself.
After the news of the crime broke, depression was one of the theories being used to explain Prakash’s brutal murder of his family. Upon being asked whether Singh showed any symptoms of depression, RK Mathur didn’t think anything was amiss. “He seemed happy, it’s just that he was at home for the past few months. And he had maybe stopped watering his plants, but we didn’t think too much of that.”
…and a Young Girl With Dreams of Entrepreneurship
“Hi. I make soaps check out @soapdynamics.” That’s the bio of Aditi Prakash on Facebook. A scroll through her public profile on the social media website reveals a chirpy young girl dedicated to her business, and her dogs.
On 5 November 2018, Aditi was featured as a “young Gurgaonite spreading smiles with her natural handmade soaps” on a website called Gurgaon Moms.
On 2 July, the same page posted an update on Facebook on being “deeply shocked and saddened to hear of the tragic demise of a budding young star Aditi Prakash.”
On her Instagram profile, she describes herself as a “mother of four dog-ters” — referring to the family’s dogs — and a “soap artist.” A student of B Pharmacy at Jamia Hamdard, Aditi is described as a talented young girl, running a successful handmade soap business from her home. “I was telling my wife just a few days ago that Aditi is becoming like her mother, Sonu. Simple living, high thinking,” says Mathur. Aditi’s “Soap Dynamics” page on FB is filled with positive reviews and photos of her handmade soaps — just like any other young start-up making itself known will do.
Sonu ran an NGO called Apni Pathshala, which has four schools in Gurugram, including schools for the underprivileged. Sonu is described as social, often dropping by her neighbour’s house for a chat, her busy schedule permitting. A scroll through the Facebook page of her playschool shows happy children. Senior police officers quoted in The Times of India say that Sonu was preparing for the schools to reopen after holidays when the crime occurred. On 28 June, just a few days before the murder, Sonu is reported to have held a meeting of the Buddhist prayer group she was a part of.
To friends, neighbours and colleagues, the family in Uppal Southend in Sector-49 in Gurugram was a normal one. On the morning of 1 July, as the bodies of Aditi, Sonu, Aditya Prakash were discovered one by one, it was clear there were fissures beneath the “normal”. But what those were remains a mystery.
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