‘I made a big mistake’: UP govt clerk kills wife, mother and 2 sons, then shoots self; shares ATM pin in final message to sister

MEERUT: Five members of a govt employee's family were found dead inside a locked room of their home after suffering close-range gunshot wounds, prompting police to investigate a suspected case of murder-suicide on Tuesday morning in Saharanpur.

The deaths came to light after neighbours alerted police, who entered the house to find the bodies of Ashok Rathi, 42, a clerk in the irrigation department, his wife Ajanta, 40, mother Vidyawati, 72, and his two sons, aged Kartik, 15, and Dev, 14 . Officers recovered three country-made pistols from different rooms, and noted that each victim had sustained gunshot injuries to the head or chest, suggesting the shots were fired from close range.

Investigators soon began piecing together the final hours of the family through digital and physical evidence. A social media message sent by Ashok shortly before the incident to a relative read, "I have made a very big mistake," a line that police described as central to their inquiry. Forensic teams sealed the house and collected mobile phones, ballistic samples and other material, while officers examined the layout of the rooms to reconstruct the sequence of events.

Police sources said Ashok had been struggling with depression since his father's death four years ago, a condition that worsened after he fell ill during the Covid pandemic. Saharanpur SP (rural) Sagar Jain told TOI, "He was undergoing treatment from Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGI), Chandigarh. He had also attempted to kill the family last year by administering sleeping pills."

Jain added that Rathi had sent a voice note to his sister, Mohini, shortly before the incident. "In the voice note, he said he had made a terrible mistake and was ending his life. He also shared ATM card passwords with her," the officer said, adding that investigators found the message consistent with other evidence recovered from the scene.

Family members chose not to seek registration of an FIR and requested that the cremation be conducted in the family's native village. Neighbours described the family as reserved and said they were unaware of any disputes or visible distress.

Police said postmortem examinations would be critical in confirming the exact sequence of the killings and establishing whether the deaths followed a single, deliberate plan or involved any other criminal element. Several political leaders visited the house during the day to offer condolences, while investigators remained focused on forensic findings.