According to informed sources, Kanhaiya Lal worked till a few years back at a pharmaceutical company in Pithampur in neighbouring Dhar district. After quitting the job, he was possibly engaged in stock trading and investment from home.

He had suffered a paralytic attack and was bedridden for the last six months. The couple led a secluded life and hardly had anyone visiting them.

According to neighbours, Smriti was last seen outside the house on November 26, after which she had never been spotted.

“The newspaper hawker, milkman and even the teams who visited the locality for Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists related work didn’t find any response after visiting the house recently,” a neighbour said.

Feeling suspicious over the couple not being spotted for more than 20 days, neighbours peeped into the room on the house’s first floor of the house from the balcony of an adjoining house on Thursday morning and reported to the police about the intolerable stench emanating from the closed house.

Cops subsequently rushed to the duplex house, broke open its entrance and climbed upstairs, where the two bodies were in a heavily decomposed state.

Lasudia police station sources said only the findings of the autopsy will reveal the cause of the deaths.