murder shakes communities and multiple murders break them when the house next door home to a happy and loving family turns into the site of multiple brutal murders hope and happiness are hard to find in the homes that surround it this was what happened to a small tight-knit community of homes in Pune in 1994 when seven people were found brutally murdered inside flat number six of himansu Apartments this is the story of that one day and those seven people this is the story of the rati family [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hi everyone welcome to the Dy crime podcast a show where we dive deep into some of the craziest cases from around South Asia I'm your host ashara and I'm Aran and the case that I have for you today is one that sends shivers down my spine in ways that only multiple murders like ji abanka have in the past Ash I mean you said pun and you said multiple murders the first thing that came to my mind was are we redoing the Joi episode but no this seems to be a a case that I've never come across before me neither it's a listener recommendation that we've had in our list a long shout out to our listeners guys feel free to DM us and email us uh cool cases that you want us to cover cuz uh apprciate we appreciate them but before we start the case for today here's a quick word from our sponsors who are hellbent on bringing you the whole truth because I end up spending half my year in the US it always end are being the case that I'm bringing stuff back from the US to India for my friends and family here which is such a relatable experience right completely relatable Asar I remember when my bua used to come back from us to India all the kids would gather around not her her suitcase because we new contained in it were chocolates candies toys that simply weren't available in India but y'all I have a trip to the US today and this will be the first time that I'll be taking something from here to there for my friends and family who live in the US because it's something that we get but they don't and what exactly is that ishwaria it's the whole truth protein powder when my boyfriend tried it a few months ago he went absolutely crazy for it and so I've been given the responsibility of fitting this in my suitcase while I'm packing insane amounts of winter clothes yeah guys it's a it's a mess she has a flight in a few hours and I don't know how she's going to fit this in guys we just wrapped up our shoot and Ash Madam here is packing her bags haphazardly as she has a flight to the US to catch in in 3 hours and um this is the state of her suitcase um this is completely real this is not an anomaly by the way this is how ishwara tends to be before any trip um and on top and on top of all of that she has to somehow figure how to pack the whole truth protein for her boyfriend which might I add maybe the easiest part of all of this packing because these whole truth protein powders come in their 15 G sachche which is so incredibly easy to put in your suitcase I need a teeny tiny bit of space in the middle of all of my winter clothes and I'm able to perfectly yeah I don't think I don't think the problem is those small saet the problem is the inordinate amount of Footwear clothes and makeup she's carrying you I don't get it neither do I so if you guys want to get your hands on these 15 G whole fro protein powder saet or just any other whole truth product like their amazing protein bars visit the whole truth foods. com and use cod da to get 20% off your order and now to begin this case I'm taking you back to the Rainy afternoon of the 26th of August in 1994 inside house number six in the Sheila vihar colony in Pune when Sanjay rati the patriarch of the rati household left his home with his brother-in-law shrikant and father kri you see while Sanjay rati his 24-year-old wife Nita their three-year-old son chag his 19-year-old sister Priti his 45-year-old mother mea Bay his father Ki rati and their 42-year-old house house help Satya Bama all lived in flat number six together that morning they had guests over too oh my God how did this house accommodate more people than the on you that just enlisted it was a beautiful sprawling home but a lot of people as that was like half the episode went into you just naming them join families am I right okay that morning sanj's older sister 27-year-old heata had come to Pune from satara with her husband Shri Kant and 2-year-old son pratique to Tire raki to her brother Sanjay because she couldn't make it on the actual day of the festival which was 5 days ago it was a busy yet very exciting morning in the family with so many people in the house especially considering the family had just learned that Sanjay's wife Nita was pregnant with their second baby so that morning the men in the house Sanjay his father kri and his brother-in-law shrikant decided to leave the home to run some errands meet some people and stop by at Sanjay's shop sagur sweet mat to finish up some work together by 600 p. m.
the men had arrived at the shop which was their last stop before they were to head back back home but at that shop sanj's father looked troubled something was bothering him he told Sanjay and Shri Kant that he could feel a pit in his stomach he had been trying the home land line all day but initially nobody had been answering and now the phone wasn't even ringing with so many people inside the house someone should have answered especially the house help satyabhama where could they all be sensing that their father was clearly deeply bothered by this odd detail Sanjay and shrikant told kri to wrap up work at the shop while they rushed back home just to make sure all was well and good in that short distance between the shop and the rati family home the men must have been coming up with all sorts of reasons why nobody answered the phone maybe they're all out maybe one of the kids disconnected the phone card who knows by the time the men arrived at the apartment and knocked on the door they noticed the deafening silence that came from within their once bustling home something was odd the men knocked and knocked some more and screened the names of their resp Vives and of their house help but no response but the men had a duplicate key and so they used it to unlatch the door the moment they stepped foot inside though their lives Came Crashing Down right before their eyes all those excuses they had been cooking up on their way back seemed so far from the truth now because in front of them lay the butchered bodies of everyone they had ever loved Sanjay son chag's small lifeless body was the first one the two men saw as it lay dead in the home's drawing room shri's wife himl was found with multiple stabbed wounds in the drawing room while the kitchen had the brutally stabbed body of the family's hous help satyabhama sanj's wife Nita and their unborn baby were found having been stabbed to death in one of the rooms of the house while Sanjay's mother was found lying dead in a pool of her blood on her own bed in her bedroom which Shan's son pratique on the floor next to his grandmother seemingly having been strangled and stabbed in one of the home's bathrooms Sanjay's younger sister pre was found dead having been strangled with a washing machine wire and then stabbed as well with splashes of blood all over the floor and walls of the home the deaths were brutal especially considering the men noticed something else next to the body sprinkles of chili powder which made no sense at the moment but everything else about the crime scene screamed a robbery gone wrong all Cupboards in the home were flung open with everything from inside them lying all over the floor of the rooms with all of the money and the jewelry missing and a few articles of clothing that couldn't be found either when the men checked the home's landline they quickly realized why their father had been unable to reach the family the phone cord had been cut using a knife once Sanjay and shrikant gathered themselves a little they quickly ran to a nearby home and used the phone there to dial the police emergency number shortly after which the police and the neighbors were swarming the area in and around the On's happy rati family home when the police began their interrogation they started by focusing on people that the rati family knew because that would explain how killer or Killers entered the home in broad daylight without any struggle or forc entry they asked sanj and his father for the names of any business rivals any old friends they had falling outs with any old helpers or workers who had worked at the house or the shop and from all of these questions one name emerged that of 20 Somey old Raju Singh Raj purohit the rati family had hired Raju in June of 1994 2 months before the day of the murder to work in their thriving Sweet Shop sagur sweet Mar but Raju had been fired from the shop just 5 days before the murder after getting fired Raju had asked the rtis to hire one of his friends instead a 22-year-old man named jitu but the rtis had said no to the police this was motive a poor man without a job fired by The rtis Who also refused to give his friend employment Raju and jitu were both suspects number one now do we know why Raju was fired yeah so I'll mention this later again but Raju was fired because he very quickly into his employment asked the family for a race that the family didn't quite feel was justified and at that point Raju had previously been fired from other jobs for multiple varying other reasons and we'll get into all of those soon got it so now Raju and jitu were both suspect number one and so when within the next 24 hours the police are unable to find Raju within Pune they work on getting a story printed about the horrific murders and making sure that raju's name is written down in the story as a suspect little did they know Raju was very much still within Pune and was reading the very news space the police had gotten published with his name smack dab in the middle turns out Raju was vigorously following the rati case and had bought the three local prominent newspapers prabhat ajka Anand and sanand the first two made no mention of Raju but sanand did it not only mentioned Raju but also jitu because Raju had tried to get jitu hired at the RTI sweet shop but for reasons we don't know the rati said no to hiring him which raised alarm bells in the minds of the cops but the police has plan to spread the word about the men and catch them using this news mention backfired the men hiding within Pune read the articles and decided to run but innocent men don't run innocent men fight for their innocence and indeed Raju jitu and their close friend 20-year-old Narayan Ram Chan Ram Chri were not innocent men in his early 20s Raju Singh Raj purohit was an enterprising young man who had moved from a small village outside of jodpur and gotten a job in a restaurant in Pune called Bombay vhar through the help of his brother who also worked in Pune but because Raju didn't speak the local language the restaurant ended up firing him within just a week of him working there even though he was fired from Bombay vard though he ended up making two friends there a 20-year-old man named Naran Ram Chetan Ram Chri and 22-year-old jitu ghot now Raju needed a new job which was when he applied to work at the rati family store sagur sweet mat but after just 2 months of working there like I mentioned to Aran Raju asked the family for a raise in his salary the family didn't agree he was asking for too much too soon before he had proven himself to them and so they said no to his demand leading to Raju quitting the job on August 21st of the same year just 5 days before the murder when Raju lost this job too he began to spend a lot of time with the only two friends that he had in the city Naran RAM and jitu by this point jitu and Naran Ram had also lost their jobs at Bombay vhar and all three of the men were living together in a room in the nagpur chw near Yar that they knew they couldn't afford the three knew they needed to find a way to make more money either by earning it or by stealing it if they were going to survive in the middle of their discussions about who they could Rob the ratti family's name was an early and very obvious one the family lived in a huge home with many old members guaranteeing the presence of valuables like jewelry and gold in the house they had a successfully running business guaranteeing the presence of cash in the house and the sheer number of people living inside would guarantee other valuables like watches cameras telephones kitchen appliances the men were going to steal it all in this plan another Advantage was raju's closeness to the rati family he had seen their work intimately and so he knew how much money they took home every day 25,000 rupees each day which in that time's money was a lot he knew the house help and so could easily enter the house without arousing suspicion he knew the schedules of the men giving them all the best short at success when the men were out and More in fact the ratis were such generous people that instead of giving their employees money to buy their own lunch or not giving it at all their lunch was made fresh inside the RTI home every day from where the employees could go and pick it up this was the reason that Raju knew the layout of the house and ways to enter it Raju was going to be the Mastermind firstly the men knew to even bring this plan to life they needed some money and so they decided to sell off a silver bracelet wor by jitu for which they got rupees 90 from those 90 bucks the trio spent $50 five on a new knife and the remaining on chili powder that they knew they were going to use to scare the victims if they didn't comply and a ton of bags that they were going to fill up with the loot they would gather the plan was set for the afternoon when Raju said only the women and kids are in the house the men are away at work Raju also explained to the men that just getting the valuables and running away was not enough the members in the house would have to be killed otherwise the men would be recognized they couldn't even go in with head coverings because then getting in would be virtually impossible if they were going to bank on the fact that the family would let Raju in to gain entry they would also need to kill the whole family or Raju would be the first to go down for the crime very readily the other two men agreed to the plan of a mass murder on the 25th of August a day before the murders the men conducted a raiki of the area they noticed not only that the men of the house are gone between 2: and 4:00 p. m. in the afternoon but also that the streets of the residential area are completely empty at that time with people off to work post lunch or taking an after nap with the sun blaring at that time of the day even kids don't play outside between those hours with their Reiki over and the time decided the men went back home and slept a good night's sleep ready to fundamentally change a family the next day the next morning amidst the heavy pun rain the men left nagpur Shaw and arrived at the colony where the rati family Bungalow is one of many but outside was the bike of Sanjay rati indicating he hadn't left for work yet scared the men left the area stood on the main road ate V bow from the local tea stall and waited for the ratti men to leave by 300 p.
m. they saw the men leave and the time to attack the women and children had arrived the men were so methodical in their planning they even went door by door to the nearby homes and locked all of the other homes from the outside giving them much more time to run without getting caught by the neighbors Raju led the men entering the house before the other two as the men were headed inside Raju saw the house help satyabhama from the AAR main door and actually got scared and turned back around trying to call the whole thing off but this was too late to show any remorse the other two men were set on the crime they threatened Raju and said they would kill him if he backed out now and so a reluctant Raju went back towards the home door and walked right in with the home's main door open the men entered straight away while the house help satyabhama knew Raju she was visibly anxious on seeing three grown men just enter the house like this the men screamed at her telling her to called 45-year-old mirabai santi's mother once mirabai emerged the man asked her to bring out all members of the House wielding their knives and now threatening to kill everyone a scared mirabai complied they asked everyone to assemble inside the main living Hall of the home where they could now keep an eye on everyone whoever protested or resisted the men started throwing chili powder in their eyes slowly bringing them all to submit from here they asked mirabai to lead the men to the valuables in the house try trying to do anything that would save her kids and grandkids mirabai LED jitu and Naran Ram to her own room where she opened the cupboard in the room and the safe within it for them the moment she opened the cupboard for the two they threw chili powder on her eyes and stabbed her multiple times till she lay dead on the bed she had shared with her husband for decades now the two men emptied her cupboard into their bags and walked out of the room and returned to the others in the living room where they now asked The Other Women of the house to take them to their respective rooms and open their cupboard too 24-year-old Nita sanj's wife led the men to her room and opened her cupboards for them where she too was skilled just like her mother-in-law the saddest bit is that Na's unborn child who never got to see the loving home they would have been born into also breathed their last breath with her I have uh one of the wildest cases in terms of just the amount of nonchalant killing yes absolutely because yeah I do not call this a robbery gone wrong no this is a murder a mass murder with of robbery I I am I'm at a loss for words on how many people have been killed and how many people are yet to be killed and and their backgrounds I mean the kids yeah [ __ ] me out in the living room Nita and Sanjay's son 3-year-old chura cried his hysterically once his mother and grandmother were taken in and didn't return the men knew they needed to make him stop crying and so right there in front of the remaining members of the home chak too was stabbed to death now in the living room remained only prti sanja's younger sister him San's older sister her son and the house help it was now priti's turn since prti was young and didn't seem to have many valuables in her possession Raju took her to one of the home's bathrooms where he cut out a wire from the washing machine and used it choke her to death thinking she was dead he left the washroom but when Narayan Ram heard the sound of coughing coming from within the washroom he scream to the others zind AB The [ __ ] Is Alive she hasn't died yet he ran to the washroom with his knife and this time made sure she was dead by stabbing her over and over again by this point Raju had taken the house help satama in the kitchen where Narayan Ram was washing priti's blood off his knife with no monetary use for satyabhama she was stabbed in the kitchen too where her lifeless body fell to the ground now heata and her son 2-year-old pratik were the last ones standing witnessed to the multiple murders that had just destroyed their whole family and turned their life upside down Raju and Narayan Ram tried to take pratik away from himl for reasons I don't fully understand maybe they had the humanity to not want the mother and child to witness each other's death but when they tried to take pratique away himl cried and screamed hysterically the men promised her though they weren't going to hurt him if she let him go they said they would only take him inside to his grandmother himl unaware that mirabai had been killed reluctantly let pratique go with jitu inside the room where meabay lay 2-year-old pratique was suffocated by jitu until he stopped moving assuming the kid to be dead jitu lay him on the floor upon killing the kid jitu went out into the living room where heata was now crying asking where her son was jitu promises her the kid is inside with his grandmother and then says is we'll deal with her now himl knew she was going to die but she wasn't going down without a fight she struggled with all her might but ended up falling down in her struggle the men overpowered her and jitu put his knees on her stomach and pressed down with all his strength that is when jitu used his knife and killed the last remaining woman in the rati family home I'm sure a lot of listeners a lot of viewers are thinking this right now as I am debating in my head mhm why didn't they fight back um they outnumbered um the As salance and it's again it's sitting in the Comforts of our studio it's easy to think why you won't fight back but you know we often hear that when you're being mugged and there's this sort of rule when I used to live in New York they used to say if you're ever being mugged give your money away just give your wall give your money there's no need to be brave or fight it out um I think this is one of those examples where that principle yeah sets the wrong precedent where you know you decided to fight when you were the only remaining member of course you have no chance but I understand that I'd rather let all the money and jewelry and gold in the world go um to let my and I think it's in that hope that take everything take everything and I think that is a key detail is what it started off looking like and it started off looking like a robbery of a former employee like being done orchestrated by a former employee and so there is always that hope they were five women against three men they weren't like severely outnumbering the men as do we know if these were Psychopaths or one of them was a psychopath we don't actually I do not un this amount of killing that you have just gotten into is like shaken me a little bit it's very because it's it's not your typical you know you killed one or two people by mistake while you were trying to rob the vault the vault is so ancillary the jewelry is so ancillary the fact that you pulled out a wire from the washing machine to strangle somebody that's that's Point Blank murder that's another view detail Aron is just the small glimpses of a strangulation in this I don't know if that's a sign of Humanity on part of these atrocious murderers but it's just a detail that really stands out to me to me it seems like they are in a I hate to say it but a kid in a toy shop going yeah just what what else can we do when when else will I get the chance to murder people let me try out all the modus operandi that exist this is sickening I agree jitu had just killed the last remaining woman in the rati family home himl again since she was only visiting for a few days and didn't have many valuables on her she served no monetary purpose to the men she needed to be killed straight away when heata fell her sari came up to her knees and in that moment now ran Ram was hellbent on raping her but he was was only stopped by Raju who maybe still felt some odd kind of affection for the family with their bags filled up to the brim with valuables and the family now dead the men quickly stole some clothes from the cupboards of the Rat men to prevent being seen with all of this blood on them and changed they then put their blood soaked clothes into their plastic bags and ran out of the house on their way out though they heard the phone landline ring it was kri rati calling from the shop scared upon hearing the phone ring the man cut the phone cord with one of their knives the moment the phone's ringing dies and the house grows silent the men hear another noise coming from within one of the rooms the cries of a child someone was still alive all three men ran inside and realized pratik wasn't dead yet him's kid irritated at the delays Naran Ram took his knife out again and stabbed pratique to death now the house was truly quiet nobody had survived the men ran out and found one Rika that dropped them off to their room at nagur Sha with all of the money stolen the men knew they needed to party they used 200 rupees from their new riches to buy tons of liquor and food in their drunken State the men went over everything they had managed to amass they found a mouth organ an expensive carpet a camera a RICO wristwatch silver coins from Nepal many mongal sutras one HMT wristwatch one gold chain three gold Bangles one gold ring with the initials Sr for Sanjay rati written on them one bundle of many 500 rupee Notes One bundle of many 100 rupe notes one bundle of many 50 rupee notes and so on after they reveled in what they had stolen the men washed all their blood stained clothes this is when the men realized they had not only stolen from the ratis but they were also stealing from each other inside Naran Ram's pant pocket Raju found a gold ring that he realized Narayan Ram had hidden from everyone else Raju then ended up keeping the ring for himself once the washing was over and the men felt like they had covered their tracks by 8:00 p. m.
the day of the murders they headed to the same jewelry shop where they had sold off the silver bracelet for the money before the crime they paid the shopkeeper 100 rupees and ended up bringing J's silver bracelet back but the men weren't interested in selling their stolen valuables yet and so they just headed back to their room to drink some more but on their way back to their apartment their land lady ended up picking a fight with them because she knew they had been drinking in the room annoyed at her Interruption the men left the apartment hung around in different parts of the city for a few hours came back to their room later in the night hid the knives and then just went to sleep while the rati family men were only beginning to absorb the shock they had come back to the three murderers slept in their beds excited for a new day to start the next day the men read two of their names in the local Pune newspapers and decided it was time to run the plan was that Naran RAM and jitu would travel to ahmdabad Via Surat and Raju would meet them there separately on the 29th of August once there together the three would head back to Rajasthan and that is exactly the plan that they followed in Rajasthan they first stopped in jaur after which they went to ganga nagar Raju and jitu at this point in the journey left Narayan Ram who ended up going back to his hometown the two stayed on the run together for many days going from ajmir to Delhi to jaur again but little did they know just 9 days after the murder on the 5th of September 1994 Naran Ram would become the first of the three to get caught at the dongerard police station after Pune police circulated pictures of the men all across Rajasthan knowing their hometown were in the state more than a month after his arrest on the 15th of October jiu's brother-in-law shatan Singh rator ended up presenting him to pun police after he grew suspicious of his behavior saw his name in the newspapers and noticed that he mysteriously had rings and coins and other valuables in his possession Raju was the last one to be caught but he too like his friends ended up behind bars just a few weeks later on Raju the police found two handwritten letters one addressed to the police and another to his parents in which he recounted the tale of the murderers and his guilt for being a part of them these chits ended up forming a huge part of the police's case against the men when the court case began Raju The Mastermind behind the plan but also the only man who seemed to show any kind of remorse ended up becoming an approver no yes I think the police needed it it may have been him beom you don't make the Mastermind the approver you make one of the lowly I I don't even want for your reference guys approver is sort of uh our the Indian version of a snitch right where you you police snitch where you help the police unfur what happened but that leads to a reduced punishment and I don't think any of them in this case deserve that any iota of reduction now obviously we don't know if the police did this just because it made their life easier or if that that's what I'm the only way out in terms of DNA evidence so now like Aran said I think it's a little bit weird that we've never used the word approver on this podcast before but an approver in an Indian court is a person who's granted a pardon for their role in the crime in exchange for their testimony against other accused people and that is what Raju was to the police now not another accused but a witness to the crime the trial for the murder of the RTI family women and children ran for 2 years and by 1998 the Pune Sessions Court had a verdict accused jitu and Nan Ram were to be hanged to death the two appealed their sentence to the Bombay high court in 1999 which upheld the death penalty and then the Supreme Court in 2000 which upheld it a second time so now it was time for the rati family to wait till at least the two accused in this case got their punishment but when do our cases ever end so easily in 2018 this case saw an enormous and unbelievable development that would kind of make you rethink the story I've told you so far the 20-year-old Narayan Ram Chri the man who told Raju he would kill him if he went back on the plan the man who killed young prti in the washroom the man who almost raped himl the man who killed 2-year-old pratik suddenly presented evidence showing he was and brace yourself for this 12 years old when the crime took place the evidence submitted by Narayan Ram wasn't some fake piece of random paper either it made the Supreme Court set up an independent inquiry into his true age at the time of the crime the members of this inquiry bench dug up his School Leaving certificate from his native Village and sworn affidavits from his village mukia too the inspectors who at the time had worked on this case came forward to say he never identified himself as a minor back then but his lawyers in 2018 said that this was a poor 12-year-old who had never received a proper education forget him telling anyone else he was a minor he himself didn't know he was one or what it meant to be one and the rights that came along with it quote he was of a strong build at the time and was not aware of his rights moreover the bone rfication1 senior Pune based lawyer hasad nimalar and then came the bombshell that shook the rati family in 2023 the Supreme Court ruled that Narayan Ram was indeed only 12 when the crimes were committed and let him walk free for Chri who had lived most of his life in captivity though that freedom did not last long after being released in March of 2023 he was arrested again in September of the same year near the Pune Mumbai Highway with 898 G of opium worth 3.
