Woman hides dead mom for 4 months

A mentally ill woman in her mid-forties lived with the body of her dead mother in the ground floor residence of a house in Saket, south Delhi, for four months, before workers of a civic body saw the decomposed body and informed the police on Saturday.

A mentally ill woman in her mid-forties lived with the body of her dead mother in the ground floor residence of a house in Saket, south Delhi, for four months, before workers of a civic body saw the decomposed body and informed the police on Saturday.

HT Image

"My mother died in her sleep,” a stone-faced Shalini Mehra told HT a day after the police sent the 81-year-old Vinodini Gupta’s body for post-mortem. Mehra’s daughter Rehanna (21) who lives in Bangalore came to Delhi and fulfilled the formalities, police said.

On Saturday, a nauseating odour greeted Delhi Jal Board workers who came to the house to check the water meter. One of them saw the body.

"For about 45 minutes we kept knocking at the door. She was adamant on not letting us enter. She had even locked the bedroom where the body was lying. We had to force open the door,” a senior police officer said.

The neighbours told the police Mehra was mentally unstable and never ventured out of the house. “She orders pizza and fast food from outside and always stays inside,” said Harsukh Lal, the security guard posted at the D Block house.

Mehra had separated from her husband 20 years ago and lived with her mother, police said. The family sold the first and the second floors of the house six years ago.

When Hindustan Times contacted her elder sister’s son he said that he had not visited his aunt for the past several months.