Varanasi 5 Murder Case

The Varanasi House Where a Family Was Wiped Out Twice, 27 Years Apart

In the early hours of November 5, 2024, five members of one family were shot dead inside their home in the Bhadaini area of Varanasi. Within days, police said the prime suspect wasn't a stranger, a rival businessman, or a hired gang — it was a nephew who had grown up in that same house after his own parents were killed under nearly identical circumstances, back in 1997. That's the part of this case that's hard to sit with: a house that had already produced one set of family killings ended up producing a second, and the second one was allegedly committed by someone the first killing had orphaned. What's still murky, even now, is exactly how much the family's elders knew before it happened, how many people were actually involved that night, and whether some of the details reported early on ever got fully sorted out.

This piece is based on Indian police statements as reported by Hindi-language outlets including Aaj Tak and ETV Bharat, plus a Bengali-language true-crime recap. Where those sources disagree, I've said so. The case, as of the most recent reporting available, was still working through the courts, so anything attributed to a suspect below is an allegation or a reported confession, not a proven fact.

Timeline

• 1997 (year disputed — see below): Rajendra Gupta is accused of killing his father, Laxmi Narayan Gupta, and a security guard, and separately of killing his brother, Krishna Gupta, and Krishna's wife, Manju, in a dispute over the family liquor and construction business.
• 1997–1999: Rajendra reportedly spends time in custody in connection with these killings before being released on bail; police say the cases were never fully pursued to conviction, in part because of his family's local influence.
• 1999 onward: Rajendra takes over the family business and raises his brother's three orphaned children — Vishal (known as Vicky), Prashant (known as Jugnu), and a daughter — alongside his own family.
• October 2024: Vicky and Jugnu reportedly travel to Varanasi to ask Rajendra for a share of the family property. According to police accounts, the conversation ends badly, with Rajendra sending them away.
• October 20, 2024: Vicky reportedly vacates his rented flat in Ahmedabad, telling people he's changing jobs.
• Night of November 4–5, 2024: Rajendra Gupta is shot dead in an under-construction property he owned in the Rohania area, roughly 15 km from the family home. Forensic reports later placed his death between around 12:30 and 1:00 a.m.
• After 5 a.m., November 5, 2024: Rajendra's wife Neetu Gupta and their three children — Navnendra, Shubendra, and Gaurangi — are shot dead inside the family home in Bhadaini.
• November 5, 2024: A domestic worker discovers the bodies and alerts police. Rajendra's body is not among them; he is initially treated as a possible suspect who fled the scene.
• Same week: Police locate Rajendra's body at the Rohania construction site and begin treating all five deaths as one case.
• Mid-November 2024: Police name Vicky as the primary suspect after questioning his grandmother, Sharda Devi, and brother Jugnu. A reward is announced for information leading to his arrest.
• February 6–7, 2025: Police arrest both Vicky and Jugnu in the Sir Govardhan area of Varanasi, where Vicky had reportedly come to meet his brother. Vicky reportedly confesses to planning the killings for roughly a year and buying the pistol used in the attack around six months before.

Police investigation scene outside a family home following a mass shooting, Varanasi India

A Phone Call Before Sunrise

The first the outside world heard of this was a panicked call to the Bhelupur police station. A domestic worker employed by the family said there had been a shooting overnight — that people inside the house were dead. Officers arrived to find blood on the living room floor and furniture knocked over, and then, room by room, the bodies. Neetu Gupta. Her daughter Gaurangi. Her sons Navnendra and Shubendra. All shot, all in the head and chest, all in different rooms of the house. Cartridge casings were scattered around, but nothing had been taken — no jewelry missing, no cupboards forced. That single detail is what pushed police away from a robbery theory almost immediately.

And then came the question that shaped the entire first week of the investigation: where was Rajendra Gupta?

The Missing Man Who Wasn't the Killer

Rajendra Gupta, the family patriarch, was nowhere in the house. No body, no sign of him having left in a hurry, nothing. Police searched the property from the garage to the garden and came up empty. Given what neighbors were telling officers — that Rajendra ran a liquor business with rough connections, that he'd made enemies through land and construction dealings, that his marriage was reportedly troubled and loud arguments were common — investigators leaned toward a theory that he had orchestrated the killings himself and disappeared.

His phone told a different story. It was still on, still pinging from a fixed location roughly 20 km away, near an under-construction building his company owned. When police got there, they found his body on the upper floor, killed the same way as the rest of his family — shot in the head and chest. Forensic analysis later suggested he'd actually been killed first, sometime around midnight, hours before his wife and children were shot after 5 a.m. the same morning.

That finding flipped the case. This wasn't a man who murdered his family and vanished. He was the first victim.

What the Grandmother Knew

With Rajendra now a victim rather than a suspect, police went back to interview his elderly mother, Sharda Devi, who lived separately from the rest of the family. According to police accounts relayed to Hindi media, she was initially reluctant to talk, but eventually told officers she believed she knew who was responsible — and that the answer went back nearly three decades.

The story she gave investigators, and which multiple Hindi outlets later reported in more detail, was this: in 1997, Rajendra — by then already at odds with his father over control of the family's liquor and construction business — was accused of killing his own father, Laxmi Narayan Gupta, along with a bodyguard, and separately his brother Krishna and Krishna's wife, Manju. Reports differ on exactly when in 1997 the killing of Krishna and Manju took place; one outlet gives June 10, 1997, while the Bengali-language recap places it on November 5 — the same calendar date as the 2024 killings, twenty-seven years later. I can't reconcile those two dates, and neither source explains the discrepancy. If the November date is accurate, the symmetry is unsettling. If it isn't, then a detail that sounds like the neatest possible narrative twist may just be an error that's been repeated across retellings. I genuinely don't know which it is, and I'd rather flag that than pretend it's settled.

What does seem consistent across reporting is that Rajendra spent time in custody over these killings before being released on bail, and that the cases against him were never fully pressed to conviction — something police sources have attributed to his family's local influence and the slow grinding-down of a case over years. He went on to take over the business, remarry, and raise a family of his own. He also took in his dead brother's three children — Vicky, Jugnu, and their sister — because, as his mother reportedly told him at the time, someone had to.

Growing Up in the House of the Man Accused of Killing Your Parents

This is the part of the story that most of the reporting agrees on, even if the emotional texture comes mostly from the Bengali recap and later confession details reported by Aaj Tak. Vicky, Jugnu, and their sister were raised alongside Rajendra's own children but treated, according to multiple accounts, as lesser members of the household — excluded from family events, treated more like domestic help than relatives. Both brothers eventually left for jobs in IT, in Ahmedabad and Delhi respectively, and by most accounts kept some distance from the family for years afterward.

The breaking point, per police accounts, came in October 2024, when the brothers returned to ask Rajendra for a share of family property. Reports say the conversation turned into a shouting match, with Rajendra sending them away without resolving anything. Vicky, according to his own reported statement to police after his arrest, had actually begun planning the killings well before that — one report citing a purchase of the pistol used in the attack roughly six months before the murders, and planning going back as far as a year.

The Manhunt

For three months, Vicky was gone. Police pursued him across Uttar Pradesh, Ahmedabad, and Maharashtra, and a reward of roughly three lakh rupees was announced for information leading to his capture. Early reporting — since narrowed or contradicted by later accounts — initially suggested up to four other people might have been involved, including Jugnu, Rajendra's first wife living in West Bengal, and her son. That version doesn't appear in the later confession-based reporting, which instead describes Vicky acting alone on the night of the killings, with Jugnu picked up separately and questioned but released for lack of evidence before Vicky's eventual capture.

Police say Vicky and his brother used burner SIMs, fake email accounts, and false identities to stay in contact without being traced — both had IT backgrounds and reportedly used that knowledge deliberately to stay ahead of investigators. On February 6, 2025, a tip led police to Sir Govardhan in Varanasi, where Vicky had apparently come to meet his brother. Both were arrested together. According to police, Vicky admitted to the killings during questioning, saying it was retribution for his parents' deaths and for years of being treated as a servant in his uncle's house — and specifically for not sparing his cousins, reportedly telling investigators he feared they would grow up to seek revenge on him the same way he had on Rajendra.

What Still Doesn't Sit Right

A few things about this case remain loose, at least in the reporting available. The date discrepancy for the 1997 killings is one. Another is that domestic worker's role — early coverage flagged her as someone police wanted to question further, given she was the one who called in the discovery, though nothing in later reporting suggests she was ever formally implicated. There's also a detail that got mentioned once and never followed up on in the sources I found: investigators reportedly recovered a personal diary belonging to Rajendra in which he wrote about wanting to arrange a marriage for his daughter and described himself, in his own words as relayed by police, as capable and principled. It's a strange thing to surface in a case built on decades of family violence, and none of the reporting explains why it mattered to the investigation, if it did at all.

And then there's the matter of the trial itself. As of the most recent reporting available, prosecutors said they had sufficient evidence against Vicky and expected the case to proceed to conviction, but no verdict had been reported. Anyone following up on this case now should check for more recent coverage, since court proceedings in India can run for years.

Gupta family tree in the Varanasi murder case

So Where Does That Leave This Family?

Two generations of the same family, killed in the same city, by someone from inside the family both times. If the police account holds up in court, this isn't a mystery in the traditional sense — there's a named suspect, a reported confession, a motive that traces back decades. What it leaves you with instead is a harder question: how much responsibility does a family carry for how it treats the children it takes in after tragedy, and is there a point past which that kind of grief curdles into something that can't be walked back? What do you think set this apart from an ordinary inheritance dispute gone violent — the 1997 killings, or what happened to Vicky and Jugnu afterward?

People Also Ask

Who killed the Gupta family in Varanasi?

Police named Rajendra Gupta's nephew, Vishal alias Vicky, as the main suspect and said he confessed to killing all five family members — his uncle Rajendra, aunt Neetu, and their three children — after his arrest in February 2025. The case was still going through trial as of the most recent reporting, so this remains an allegation and a reported confession rather than a court-confirmed verdict.

Why did Vicky allegedly kill his uncle's family?

According to police accounts, Vicky and his brother Jugnu believed Rajendra Gupta had killed their parents, Krishna Gupta and his wife Manju, in 1997. They said they were treated poorly while growing up in Rajendra's household afterward, and that a property dispute in October 2024 was the final trigger. Vicky reportedly told investigators he killed his cousins as well because he feared they would grow up to avenge their father the way he had avenged his.

Was Rajendra Gupta ever convicted for the 1997 killings?

No. Reports indicate he was accused of killing his father, a security guard, his brother, and his sister-in-law in 1997, and spent time in custody before being released on bail. Police sources say the case was never fully pursued to conviction, partly attributed to his family's local influence.

How did police first suspect Rajendra Gupta was involved?

Because his body wasn't found at the crime scene alongside his wife and children, and his reported history of family conflict, police initially treated him as a possible suspect who had fled. That theory was dropped once his own body was found at a separate property, killed in the same manner as the rest of his family.

How long did it take police to catch the suspect?

Vicky evaded police for about three months after the November 2024 killings, reportedly using fake identities, burner SIM cards, and false email accounts. He was arrested along with his brother Jugnu in February 2025 in Varanasi.

Is the Varanasi Gupta family case solved?

Police say they have a confession and sufficient evidence against the named suspect, but as of the latest available reporting, the matter was still before the courts and no final verdict had been announced. Readers following the case should check for more recent coverage for updates.

• Siya Goyal Ketan Agarwal Case  Maharashtra