The Goel couple in an album photograph. (PTI)

New Delhi, May 26 (PTI): An elderly couple was today found murdered and their house in a posh south Delhi locality ransacked.

Police suspect their domestic help who is absconding. He was employed a week ago.

Ashok Goel, 62, a former purchase manager of the Taj Mahal Hotel here, and wife Lata, 55, were found with their throats slit this morning at their Neeti Bagh residence by the police who were alerted by a neighbour.

The domestic help, Mukesh Yadav, who was introduced to the Goels by their former help Radha, is missing. The police are sending a team to Bhagalpur in Bihar, where he came from.

“A sharp-edged weapon was used to kill the couple. The house has been ransacked and we suspect the motive is robbery. We are sending a team to Bhagalpur to find Yadav,” deputy commissioner of police (south) H.G.S. Dhaliwal told reporters.

Lata, a heart patient, was not keeping well and had recently undergone eye surgery. The Goels had another help, Sumitra, who worked during the day.

The police verification of Yadav, employed eight days ago, was not done. The family had filed the application for the same yesterday evening, he added.

The incident came to light after Mukesh Bharadwaj, the neighbour, went to the house following a call from the couple’s younger daughter Priya. She had requested him to check on her parents after her repeated attempts to reach them over phone proved futile.

Bharadwaj informed the police after he saw blood seeping out from the front door which was locked from inside. The police entered the house from the terrace and found the bodies lying in a pool of blood.

A senior police official said they were yet to ascertain the stolen property from the house.

The police will question Radha, the former servant, and Sumitra besides Sankar Kamat, the driver of Goel’s brother-in-law Rajendra Gupta, who had been in the house last evening.

Rajendra asked Kamat to arrange a driver for the Goels and he had gone there in this regard, the driver said.

This is the fifth incident of crime allegedly involving domestic servants reported from south Delhi this month.

An elderly couple and their grandson were drugged in New Friends colony on May 7, and an interior designer and his minor son were drugged in south-west Delhi in the second week of May. Both were separate cases of robbery.

A 70-year-old woman was murdered allegedly by her servant in south Delhi on May 6.

On May 11, two young working women were drugged allegedly by their domestic help who escaped with valuables.