A 50-year-old mentally challenged woman stayed in her south Delhi house with the body of her octogenarian mother for a month, not recognising that she was dead, the police said on Sunday.
The decomposed body of Vinod Gupta, 80, was discovered from her residence in Saket D-Block on Saturday afternoon after a Delhi Jal Board employee, who came there to check the water meter, became suspicious and informed the police.
A police team came to the spot and knocked the door but there was no response.
After sometime, police broke open the door only to sense a foul smell emanating from the room and find a woman, later identified as Shalini, the deceased's daughter, sitting there, a senior police officer said.
"Then we found a decomposed body on the bed which was identified as that of her mother. We asked the woman about it but she did not speak. She did not tell anything. She appeared to be mentally challenged," the official said.
"There were parts of bones and flesh. The body was badly decomposed. We collected the body parts and took them to AIIMS for postmortem," the officer said. The deceased was also found to be wearing socks.
It appears that she died a few months ago, the officer said it was surprising that none of the neighbours could find out about the death earlier.
The official said they were awaiting the postmortem report to ascertain when she died and the cause of death.
Prima facie, he said, it did not appear that there was any foul play in the incident.
Shalini is a divorcee and has been suffering from mental illness
