Lucknow: Last month, when the Station House Officer (SHO) of Varanasi’s Lanka area forced his way into the house of two sisters — Pallavi and Vaishviki — he was greeted with a bizarre sight. The two, it was discovered, were living with the remains of their mother Usha, who had allegedly died of an illness in December last year.
The two sisters, it turned out, had managed to conceal their mother’s death not only from their family but also from their neighbours for almost a year.
According to the police, the incident came to light Wednesday, when Pallavi and Vaishviki’s relatives visited them at their house, located in the city’s Madarwa area.
DCP (Kashi zone) Ram Sewak Gautam told mediapersons that Mirzapur resident Dharmendra Kumar Chaturvedi informed Lanka police station that their relatives, Pallavi Tripathi (27) and Vaishviki Tripathi (18), were refusing to open the door to their house.
“When SHO Lanka went to the spot, he investigated and got the door opened. It was found that a woman’s skeleton was lying in one of the rooms. The two sisters were found in the house too. They were questioned and they said their mother, who had been unwell and suffered from tuberculosis, had died a year ago. They didn’t share the news of her death with anyone. After filing the details, a post mortem is being conducted,” he said, adding that a forensic team has collected details and facts are being ascertained.
After being questioned by the police, the girls stayed at their neighbours’ house for two days, after which they went to their aunt’s place in Mirzapur Friday.
The sisters, said DCP Gautam, were unemployed and were living off ration they would get under government schemes, and had sold some of their mother’s jewellery to sustain themselves. “They also said that their relatives would send some money via online mode, but they didn’t have any major source of income,” added DCP Gautam.
Estranged from their father — who lives in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district, according to the police — the two had been living in the Varanasi house, which belongs to their maternal grandfather Ram Krishna. Two months ago, he too had travelled from Lucknow, where he lives, to visit them but the women had refused to open the doors then too, neighbours informed the police.
Speaking to ThePrint, some neighbours said that whenever they had enquired about Usha’s condition over the past year, the sisters would simply say that she was at home and was doing fine.
“Ever since the house was constructed, the family members have kept to themselves and seldom interacted with neighbours,” Pappu Singh, their neighbour, told ThePrint.
“About 15 days ago, the elder sister came to our house and asked me to help her get a loan for Rs 10 lakh. I got suspicious and asked why. She told me she wanted to start her own business. She said that they have been trying to get a loan since 2019 but were unable to get it. I asked her if they had had food and she told me that they did not. We offered her some food, but she didn’t eat at our house. She took it home. I felt something serious was going on,” Singh added.
Singh said Pallavi returned to their house after some time and asked him to help her get a loan again.
“When I asked if she had eaten the food, she said she had and even fed some of it to her mother,” he said.
Pappu Singh claims it was him who informed their grandfather about their condition and the latter sent the sisters’ uncle and aunt to check on them.
“However, when they arrived on Wednesday, the girls refused to open the door and said that they didn’t want to meet them and didn’t want any help from them,” he added.
It was only after the police arrived that the door was forced open.
“I think no skin was left on the woman’s [Usha’s] body. Some smell had emanated, but we didn’t get to know because our house is closed only from the back. It is open from other sides. The girls told the police that a smell emanated from the body for the initial 12-13 days, during which time they shifted to a room upstairs,” he added.
According to DCP Gautam, the relatives of the young women are helping them get medical treatment.
Speaking to ThePrint, Dr Nimesh G. Desai, senior psychiatrist and former director of Delhi’s Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), said that from the prima facie evidence and details, it can be inferred that both Pallavi and Vaishviki “require mental health diagnosis”.
The fact that the two women continued to live on with a skeleton in their house reveals that they may have a serious mental disorder since they seem to be exhibiting emotional indifference to the dead body.
“Underscoring a definite diagnosis however, can only be possible after an examination of the women by a professional psychiatrist,” he said.
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‘They didn’t like asking for help’
However, asked about the mental health of the sisters, Pappu Singh said that the girls would behave absolutely normally with them and it was only recently that they felt that they were a little “disturbed.”
He said that they last saw Usha Tripathi in November 2022.
“Usha and her daughters along with Ram Krishnahad been running a cosmetic shop which had to be shut down during the pandemic. However, there was a dispute between Usha and her father over a match proposed for her elder daughter. Usha was not in favour of getting her fixing her daughter’s match where her father had wanted. Her father went to live with his second daughter’s house in Lucknow,” he said.
“They used to say they had no one to call their own,” Pappu’s daughter Anita told mediapersons Wednesday.
While Pallavi has a Master degree in commerce, Vaishviki dropped out of school after studying till class IX, added Pappu.
Pappu told ThePrint that when his daughter asked Pallavi and Vaishviki why they did not reveal that their mother had died, the sisters said that “they were scared of being held responsible for their mother’s death”.
According to Desai, such incidents are largely infrequent. “In one instance, which was widely reported in 2010, a South Delhi woman was found living with a dead body. However, this is striking since two people are involved here,” he said to ThePrint.
“More often, such people tend to either be diagnosed with illnesses like Schizophrenia or delusional disorder. What is shocking is that two people are involved here. In the past, there have been cases of folie a deux (shared psychotic disorder), a rare disorder where two or more persons share a delusion. It may be induced in the second person from one of the siblings or relatives. Often siblings with similar genetic susceptibility share the same delusion,” he said.
Desai added that an exaggerated sense of privacy, wherein one builds emotional boundaries to keep relatives and neighbours at bay, can play a role in such a condition.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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