An elderly couple was smothered by unidentified persons at their East of Kailash residence, where their two sons were staying with their families on separate floors.
Manohar Lal Madan (85), a retired bank official, and his wife Vimla (79) were killed while they were asleep last night by suspected robbers who entered their room, which was found ransacked after the incident, on the ground floor of their house in southeast Delhi.
"A case of robbery and murder has been registered at Amar Colony police station. The case is being investigated from all possible angles," said DCP (South east) M S Randhawa.
While the elderly couple lived on the ground floor of the three-storey building, their youngest son lives on the first floor with his family and the eldest, who had come from Mumbai for Diwali, was staying on the top floor. The second son of the Madans live abroad, said police.
According to the police, the incident was reported around 2.15 AM by the victims' youngest son Sanjay Madan (48), a senior consultant at a multinational IT company, who told the police that he was awakened by a sudden flash of light which fell on his face while he was asleep.
On waking up, he heard the sound of someone running on the premises of the building.
He soon alerted his 19-year-old daughter and both went to check on the elderly couple. On reaching downstairs, they found that the sliding door to the victims' room was wide open.
The elderly couple was found lying motionless on the bed and the room was ransacked. On realising something was wrong, they raised an alarm and Sanjay called up the police control room.
The couple were rushed to the AIIMS Trauma Centre where they were declared brought dead and their bodies were sent for postmortem examination in the morning, said police.
