The Karnal police had claimed to have solved the case with the arrest of five persons, reportedly belonging to the Bawaria gang, an erstwhile criminal community, on August 19. The five were later remanded to judicial custody. Karnal SP Sudhir Mohan said the police had recovered the iron rod used by the assailants. He also said that V.D. Sharma, Madhu's husband, had been unable to recollect the sequence of events in a coherent manner because of the head injuries he had sustained. However, the state government has now referred the case to the CBI.

R.K.Sharma is surprised that the police registered a case of robbery even though they found two bodies lying in a pool of blood and a third person in critical condition.

According to R.K.Sharma, if robbery had been the motive, the two persons would not have been killed so brutally. In this context, he said heads of both the victims were found smashed. The postmortem report also said the cause of the death was due to injuries to the brain. R.K.Sharma said the five suspects, who are reported to have no previous record of crime, had filed a petition with the National Human Rights Commission. Moreover, the police did not recover any stolen item from them. Mr Mohan said no stolen items could be recovered since the leader of the suspects was absconding.

Lawyer and district Congress president Kuldip Sharma said no injury marks were found on the bodies of the victims despite the fact that a scuffle is reported to have been taken place between the Sharmas and the assailants.

He said the Bawarias had a typical style of operation. They distributed the booty immediately after committing a crime and then dispersed. In this case, the five suspects were arrested from one place. Besides, the gang always targeted houses located in isolated places and generally entered through the back door. In this case, the killers are reported to have entered the house from the front. Besides, the house was located on a busy road, only 200 yards away from a police post.