11 bodies, 10 of them hanging, found at New Delhi home

Police in India's capital said they found 11 bodies at a home under mysterious circumstances on Sunday, including 10 that were blindfolded and hanging.

Pedestrians gather near the house where Indian police found 11 bodies in Burari village, north Delhi, India, Sunday, July 1, 2018.(AP Photo/Rishabh R. Jain)

The victims were all from the same family and most had lived in the home where they were found in Burari village in the northern part of New Delhi, said police officer Vineet Kumar.

During a search of the house, handwritten notes were found that point "toward observance of some definite spiritual or mystical practices by the whole family," police said in a statement.

"Coincidentally, these notes have strong similarity with the manner in which the mouths, eyes etc of the deceased were tied and taped," the statement said. It didn't elaborate.

Kumar said police began their investigation after they received a call Sunday morning that some "members of a family have committed suicide."

But he said that no suicide note was found, and that police were investigating whether the victims — a 77-year-old woman, her two sons and their wives, a daughter and five grandchildren — died by suicide or were killed.

There were no bullet marks on the victims' bodies and there was no sign of forced entry into the house, Kumar said. "We're yet to reach any conclusion whatsoever," he said.

India Police next the house where 11 bodies were found in Burari village, north Delhi, India, Sunday, July 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Rishabh R. Jain)

Police said in their statement later Sunday that a murder case had been registered, though a police official said both murder and suicide were being investigated.

The statement said that the house had not been ransacked, and that no valuables were found to be missing.

Ten bodies, blindfolded by cotton and pieces of cloth, were found hanging from an iron grill used as a ventilator in the home's courtyard, while the body of the 77-year-old woman was lying on the floor of the house, said the police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

The family had lived in the house for more than two decades, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. It said the house belongs to a businessman who ran a plywood shop and dairy.

The newspaper said that at around 8 a.m. Sunday, a neighbor with whom the businessman used to go for morning walks went to see him and found the door of the house open and the 10 people, including the businessman, hanging. He raised an alarm and people called the police.

Arjun Thukral, a relative of the family who lives in the same neighborhood, said he ran to the victims' house as news of the deaths spread.

"I saw the bodies hanging, stools lying around, and my wife's aunt sprawled on the floor by the bed. I couldn't bear watching anymore," he said.

An ambulance carries one of the 11 dead bodies found in Burari village, north Delhi, India, Sunday, July 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Rishabh R. Jain)

Thukral questioned whether the family had died by suicide.

"No father can kill his own son. ... How would a mother be able to kill her own children? I don't think they committed suicide. These are murders," he said.

New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who visited the scene, called the incident "tragic."

"Police are investigating. ... Let's wait for their investigation to be over," he said.

In a video posted on Twitter by Kejriwal's ruling party, the neighbors are heard telling Kejriwal that the family was busy with wedding preparations.

A neighbor of the family said they couldn't have died by suicide, New Delhi Television reported. The neighbor said he spoke to one of the victims Saturday night and found no sign of any stress, the report said.

Indian TV channels broadcast interviews with neighbors who said the family did not have any discord among themselves.

Police official Rajesh Khurana told reporters that all angles were being investigated. "We can't rule out anything," he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A ancient giant snake in India might have been longer than a school bus and weighed a ton, researchers reported Thursday.

Fossils found near a coal mine revealed a snake that stretched an estimated 36 feet (11 meters) to 50 feet (15 meters). It's comparable to the largest known snake at about 42 feet (13 meters) that once lived in what is now Colombia.

The largest living snake today is Asia's reticulated python at 33 feet (10 meters).

The newly discovered behemoth lived 47 million years ago in western India’s swampy evergreen forests. It could have weighed up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), researchers said in the journal Scientific Reports.

They gave it the name Vasuki indicus after “the mythical snake king Vasuki, who wraps around the neck of the Hindu deity Shiva,” said Debajit Datta, a study co-author at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.

This monster snake wasn’t especially swift to strike.

“Considering its large size, Vasuki was a slow-moving ambush predator that would subdue its prey through constriction,” Datta said in an email.

Fragments of the snake's backbone were discovered in 2005 by co-author Sunil Bajpai, based at the same institute, near Kutch, Gujarat, in western India. The researchers compared more than 20 fossil vertebrae to skeletons of living snakes to estimate size.

While it's not clear exactly what Vasuki ate, other fossils found nearby reveal that the snake lived in swampy areas alongside catfish, turtles, crocodiles and primitive whales, which may have been its prey, Datta said.

The other extinct giant snake, Titanoboa, was discovered in Colombia and is estimated to have lived around 60 million years ago.

What these two monster snakes have in common is that they lived during periods of exceptionally warm global climates, said Jason Head, a Cambridge University paleontologist who was not involved in the study.

“These snakes are giant cold-blooded animals," he said. "A snake requires higher temperatures” to grow into large sizes.

So does that mean that global warming will bring back monster-sized snakes?

In theory, it's possible. But the climate is now warming too quickly for snakes to evolve again to be giants, he said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

This image provided by researchers in April 2024 shows views of some of the vertebrae of Vasuki indicus, a newly discovered extinct snake from about 47 million years ago, estimated to reach nearly 50 feet (15 meters) long. The scale bar at the center of each row showing rotated views of an individual vertebra indicates 5 centimeters (almost 2 inches). (Sunil Bajpai, Debajit Datta, Poonam Verma via AP)