The accused Prabhu Nath, a resident of Bhajapura, is a relative, the police say (Representational)
The Delhi Police arrested a 26-year-old man on Thursday for allegedly killing five members of a family, including three children, in northeast Delhi's Bhajanpura because he did not want to repay Rs 30,000 that he had borrowed from them.
The accused Prabhu Nath, a resident of the area, is a relative of the family and killed four of the family within a span of around four hours, police said.
Decomposed bodies of e-rickshaw driver Shambhu Chaudhary (43), his wife Sunita (37) and their children -- Shivam (17), Sachin (14) and Komal (12) -- were found inside their rented house on Wednesday morning.
The bodies were in a putrefied state and it seemed that the murder had been committed around one week ago, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Northeast) Ved Prakash Surya said.
On contacting schools of the children, it was learnt that they were absent since February 4. Call records of Shambhu showed that his phone was active till late evening of February 3, the officer said.
In one of the CCTV footage obtained from the area, Prabhu Nath was seen entering the victims' house around 3.30 pm on February 3. Following this, he was arrested and during interrogation he confessed to the crime, police said.
"He said that he worked in a coaching institute at Laxmi Nagar and also used to work as a collection agent of some money lender. He had borrowed Rs 30,000 from Shambhu and had loaned the same to some people for obtaining interest," the DCP said.
At 3:30 pm on the day of incident, Prabhu Nath called Shambhu asking him to come to Laxmi Nagar.
When Shambhu went to Laxmi Nagar, Nath went to his house where Sunita was alone and an altercation took place between them on the issue of returning the money, Surya said.
The accused strangled Sunita and hit her on the head with an iron rod. When her daughter Komal returned from tuition, she too was killed in the same manner. Shivam and Sachin were killed upon their return from school by hitting them on the head with the iron rod, the DCP said.
He then locked the house from outside and went to meet Shambhu. They both had liquor. Later, they both returned to the house and Shambhu was hit on the head with the iron rod in the darkness, causing his death, Surya said.
The keys of the house have been recovered from Prabhu Nath's possession and a search is on for the iron rod used in the crime, police said.