Ahmedabad: An autorickshaw driver, his wife and three children were found dead in their home in Bagodara village in the early hours of Sunday, in what is suspected to be suicide using poison.Police are investigating whether the incident was triggered by a financial crisis or linked to occult practices. The village was thrown into chaos around 2am when a neighbour found the driver, identified as 32-year-old Vipul Vaghela, motionless outside the family’s humble rented home. The neigbour alerted police and called the ambulance services while others checked on the family inside, only to find Vaghela’s wife Sonal (26), their children Kareena (11), Mayur (8), and Princess (5) also dead. Police are questioning neighbours and contacts to understand the sequence of events. “The man used to drive an autorickshaw for a living. The reason behind the family’s extreme step is not immediately clear,” said an official from Ahmedabad (rural) police. A Bagodara police officer said, “Vaghela had taken a loan from a private bank to buy the autorickshaw. While the bodies bear no injury marks and no suicide note has been recovered from the place, we are probing all angles, including financial crisis. We will also probe if the head of the family was involved in occult practices and if the incident is a case of human sacrifice. We are trying to know whom they spoke with before their deaths,” the officer added.Police also found pieces of corn near the bodies. “We are presuming that Vaghela first made his family eat food laced with poison, and himself ingested poison after they died,” said the officer.A forensic team examined the scene and a postmortem was conducted at a nearby hospital after samples were sent for analysis.
