The deaths of a wealthy Indian-origin couple and their daughter in the US state of Massachusetts last week have been ruled a murder-suicide by medical authorities after autopsy.

Rakesh Kamal, 57, his wife Teena Kamal, 54 and their college-going daughter Arianna Kamal, 18 were found dead in their USD 5 million mansion in Dover, Massachusetts on December 28, 2023.

A firearm was found near Rakesh Kamal.

A press release issued by the office of Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey on Tuesday said that autopsy results issued by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirm that Teena and her daughter Arianna were victims of homicide by gunshot.

Rakesh died from a “gunshot wound consistent with being self-inflicted”. The final autopsy report is likely to be completed in the coming weeks.

The release further said that while full forensic and ballistics testing of the gun has not been finalised, the firearm found with Rakesh is consistent with a .40 calibre Glock 22.

However, the firearm was not registered in Rakesh’s name and “he was not licensed to possess it,” the release added.

Massachusetts State Police have contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives for assistance in determining the origin of the firearm. The incident remains under investigation by Dover and Massachusetts State Police.

Last week, Morrissey said that the initial investigation indicated the incident was a case of domestic violence and did not initially indicate the involvement of outside parties.

Dover Police received a 911 call requesting a response to the Kamal residence at approximately 7:24 p.m. on December 28 by a family member who had stopped by to check on the family.

The police found the Kamal family dead when it arrived on the scene. Investigators had worked the crime scene through much of the night.

Dover is about 32 kilometres southwest of downtown Boston, the capital of Massachusetts.

Morrissey has said that there had been no prior police reports or domestic incidents tied to the home.

The family’s sprawling mansion, estimated to be worth USD 5.45 million, went into foreclosure a year ago and was sold for USD 3 million, according to a report in The New York Post.

The Kamals purchased the 19,000-square-foot estate, which boasts 11 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms, for USD 4 million in 2019, according to the records, and media reports.

The slain family members were the only ones living in the mansion at the time, the DA said, adding that the area, one of the richest in the state, was a nice neighbourhood and a safe community.

Teena and her husband, who also went by Rick, had previously run a now-defunct education systems company called EduNova. The couple appeared to have faced financial problems in recent years, online records show. Their company was launched in 2016 but was dissolved in December 2021, state records show.

Teena was listed on EduNova’s website as the chief operating officer of the company, describing her as an alum of Harvard University and Delhi University in India.

According to his biography on the EduNova website, Kamal was an alumnus of Boston University and MIT Sloan School of Management, as well as Stanford University.

Before working at EduNova, he held many executive-level positions in the education-consulting field, the biography added.

EduNova marketed a student success system designed to improve the grades of students in middle school, high school and college, The Boston Globe newspaper reported.

Teena filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in September 2022 listing between USD 1 million and USD 10 million in liabilities, filings show. The case, however, was dismissed two months later due to insufficient documentation. She was listed as one of the board of directors for the American Red Cross of Massachusetts.

Her online bio noted her more than three decades of working in the education and technology industries.

Meanwhile, the couple’s daughter was a student at Middlebury College, a USD 64,800-a-year private liberal arts school in Vermont, where she was studying neuroscience, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Morrissey also said that a homicide had not been reported in Dover since 2020, and he has never worked a homicide case from that neighbourhood since he started his position as District Attorney 12 years ago.

Morrissey had said that it was very rare to have this kind of a violent situation almost in any community in Norfolk County, particularly Dover. It’s a small, well-run community, but like everybody else, there are problems out there that can affect no matter where one lives, he had said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

In a huge victory for the Adani Group, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said the report by the OCCRP – an organisation funded by billionaire George Soros, among others – can’t be the basis for doubting the capital markets regulator SEBI’s investigation into the Hindenburg case.

Delivering the judgment, a Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said there were no grounds to transfer the probe to a special investigation team (SIT).

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has investigated 22 out of the 24 cases linked to the US-based short seller Hindenburg Research’s allegations. The Supreme Court gave the SEBI three months to complete investigation in the remaining two cases.

The Supreme Court also ordered the government and SEBI to check whether Hindenburg has ignored rules in shorting the market and to take action accordingly.

“The reliance on the OCCRP report is rejected and the reliance on a third-party organisation report without any verification cannot be used as proof. There are no grounds to transfer the probe in this case from SEBI,” Chief Justice Chandrachud said in the judgment, referring to the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

The judgment reflected what the Supreme Court told lawyer Prashant Bhushan on November 24, that the Hindenburg allegations and the OCCRP report targeting the Adani Group cannot be treated as gospel.

“Reliance on newspaper reports and third-party organisations to question the statutory regulator (SEBI) does not inspire confidence. They can be treated as inputs. but not conclusive evidence to doubt SEBI’s probe,” the Supreme Court said today.

“Before concluding, public interest jurisprudence was developed to provide access to ordinary citizens… petitions that lack adequate research and rely on unsubstantiated reports cannot be accepted,” the court said.

The petitions on the issue were filed by lawyers Vishal Tiwari and ML Sharma, Congress leader Jaya Thakur and activist Anamika Jaiswal. The petitions had claimed the Adani Group inflated its share prices, and that the shares of some group entities had fallen sharply after the report by short-seller Hindenburg Research on January 24 last year.

The Adani Group had termed the report a “malicious combination of selective misinformation and concealed facts relating to baseless and discredited allegations to drive an ulterior motive”.

The Supreme Court, explaining why it denied the request to transfer the probe to an SIT, said the investigation should be transferred only under exceptional circumstances, and such a power can’t be used without a strong, logical justification.

A key learning from the Hindenburg row is to plug gaps for the benefit of Indian investors, the Supreme Court said, and ordered the Centre and the SEBI to use the committee’s suggestions to strengthen the investors.

In the last hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for SEBI, had said it had completed looking into 22 of the 24 cases of suspected transactions, and information from agencies abroad was awaited for the remaining two.

A separate committee appointed by the Supreme Court that looked into India’s regulatory mechanism to protect investors, in its report submitted in May last year, had also given a clean chit to the Adani Group.

It had said there was no regulatory failure on the part of SEBI, and no price manipulation on the part of the Adani Group. The conglomerate had taken necessary steps to comfort retail investors amid severe market turmoil following the publication of the Hindenburg report, the committee had said.

In its response to the Hindenburg report, the Adani group had called it a “selective and manipulative presentation of matters already in the public domain to create a false narrative”.

“This is not merely an unwarranted attack on any specific company but a calculated attack on India, the independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions, and the growth story and ambition of India,” the group had said in a statement. 

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Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has said sometimes one ends up in “vanvas” while waiting for “rajtilak” (coronation).

After the BJP’s landslide victory in the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls held in November 2023, the party chose Mohan Yadav as the chief minister, replacing Shivraj Chouhan who served as the state’s CM for four times.

Shivraj Chouhan, while addressing a gathering in Shahganj town under his Budhni assembly seat on Tuesday evening, got emotional and said he will continue to be among the people, especially his sisters.

“I will not go anywhere. I will live here and die here,” Mr Chouhan said when a couple of women sitting in the audience shouted “bhaiyya (brother), don’t go anywhere leaving us alone.”

The former chief minister said all the works started by the previous BJP government, including the Ladli Behna Yojana (for women’s welfare), housing scheme for beneficiaries of the Ladli Behna scheme, a scheme of one job in each family and promises made to farmers, will be fulfilled by the present government.

“The new government will take forward all these works. There must be some big objective somewhere, sometimes by the time ‘rajtilak’ takes place, one even ends up in ‘vanvas’ (exile). But all this happens to fulfil some or the other objective,” Mr Chouhan told the gathering.

He said the present ruling dispensation will implement all these schemes as there is BJP’s government in the state and not of the Congress.

The former chief minister also noted that children who were among the audience had come to show their love for “mama” (maternal uncle – as Mr Chouhan is popularly referred).

Earlier, a large number of BJP workers and women welcomed Mr Chouhan on his arrival in Shahganj.

Mr Chouhan won the election from Budhni assembly seat by a margin of more than 1.04 lakh votes over his Congress rival Vikram Mastal.

In the November 2023 state elections, the BJP bagged 163 of the 230 assembly seats, posting a resounding victory and retaining power in the central state.

The opposition Congress was relegated to a distant second spot with victory in 66 assembly segments, while one seat was won by the Bharat Adivasi Party.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)