The police are wondering how the group, comprising around 25 men clad only in briefs, managed to infiltrate Delhi's borders. Patrolling had been beefed up in south-west, south, west and north-west Delhi soon after reports on the Gurgaon incident poured in yesterday.

``Though there were similar attacks in several farmhouses around the same time last year, we did not anticipate a repeat this year,'' says a senior police official from south-west Delhi. According to one of last night's victims, Kishen Chand, some men came knocking at his door around 2 a.m. As soon as he answered the call, he was hit with rods and sticks. The assailants didn't even spare Kishen Chand's wife, Premwati, and his son, when they attempted to put up a resistance.

Kishen Chand and his three brothers -- Deep Chand, Har Chand and Dileep -- live in the same compound along with their families. Though they share the kitchen, each has a separate house. They work as farmers and sell milk to villagers.

After the assailants looted Kishen Chand's house, they bolted the door from the outside and attacked Deep Chand and his family. For almost and hour they systematically went about looting the houses of Har Chand and Dileep Chand as well. The latter had heard screams from their brothers' houses and locked the doors, but the gang broke in. The Chands live in a deserted area. None of the neighbours had a clue about the incident till this morning. The gang left the spot only after Kishen Chand's children announced that ``their uncle who carries a revolver would come any moment to collect milk''. Incidentally, around the same time an auto-rickshaw happened to be passing by. And the ``uncle'', Rakesh Gupta, turned up soon after the gang left the spot.

Before leaving, they took away Rs 25,000, five luggage boxes, almost all the clothes they could lay their hands on, a bottle of kerosene, a bottle of mustard oil and a bottle of whiskey.

Rakesh Gupta, a cousin of the Chands, says he reached the spot around 3 a.m. ``I usually come to milk the cows and collect it for distribution in the morning. But this time I found my cousins beaten black and blue. I called the police immediately. But the first PCR van came only an hour later,'' says Gupta. The Chands were taken to Safdarjung Hospital. All of them had sustained injuries on their heads and shoulders. While Kishen Chand and his wife are still in hospital, the others have been discharged.

The police suspect that Baw-arias were behind the attack because the modus operandi is very similar.