Burari deaths: Residents don't trust the local police

The residents of Burari in North Delhi, where 11 bodies of a joint family were found hanging on Sunday morning, said that lawlessness in the area is nothing new to them.

"With no patrolling and next to no police response, this was expected," said Ashi, a local. "There are several CCTV cameras fixed in the area but none of them work. We realised this when six months ago three cars were stolen from the main road and our only hope to get any clue about the thieves was a CCTV footage from a camera very close to the spot. But it turned out later that they did not function. The police has not done their investigation to recover our cars either," said Raju, another resident.

Burari was recently witness to a gang war in which innocent pedestrians were killed, a fire at a warehouse, daylight shooting and the most recent case of 11 family members hanging to death in their residence.

Prem Chand Gupta, a local said, "the police do not serve their main purpose here. We file a complaint and for all, we know it is lying in the raddi since they never come on time to help us out even though the police station is barely 500 metre from here. The only thing they do is catch people without helmets and fine them and once in a while catch a robber or maybe even stage robberies. We don't trust the police here at all."

Patrolling and brisk action by the police could have forestalled the suicide case of the family was heard in the gali of their residence.