Serial killers have always been an extremely interesting topic for many. While Jack The Ripper and Ted Bundy have been known by all and written about everywhere, I’ve never really read much about Indian serial killers. That’s why I decided to read up a little on some of the scary people our country has produced. Check it out!
1) Thug Behram
Thug Behram also known as Buhram Jemedar and the ‘King of the Thugs’, was a leader of the Thuggee cult active in Oudh in northern central India during the late 18th and early 19th century. Behram used his kamarbund as a handkerchief with a large medallion sewn into it to execute his killings. He has allegedly been involved in 931 murders by strangulation. In 1840, he was executed by hanging.
2) M. Jaishankar
Also called Psycho Shankar, M Jaishankar has been accused of killing at least 19 women. The murderer has been involved in a series of rapes and murders across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh during 2008-11. He is currently imprisoned in Bangalore and has been termed mentally ill.
3) Mohan Kumar
What’s with serial killers and pet names? Mohan Kumar is known as Cyanide Mohan because would lure women and kill them by giving them cyanide pills, claiming they were contraceptives, and rob them of their jewelry. He was charged with 20 murders. Mohan fought his own case in court, he was sentenced to death in December 2013
4) Motta Navas
Motta Navas committed some ghastly murders in the city of Kollam in Kerala between June and August 2012. Motta would bludgeon street dwellers to death while they slept. All the murders took place at night and were committed by using stones or hard, blunt objects.
5) Raman Raghav
Another one with a nickname, Raman Raghav is one of the more popular names in this list. Based in Mumbai, Raman too had a tendency to bludgeon hutment dwellers living in the outskirts of Mumbai with hard and blunt objects. In interviews to the Special Medical Board that would go on for hours, Raman would keep repeating that he is – 101 percent man and that a homosexual relationship would turn him into a woman! He is known to be India’s worst and most horrific serial killer and his story is going to be made into a movie by Anurag Kashyap, starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
6) Umesh Reddy
Umesh Reddy is a serial rapist and killer from India. He has confessed to killing 18 women, and has been convicted in 9 cases. The police believe that he raped at least 20 women in the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Umesh has been sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India.
7) Ripper Jayanandan
K P “Ripper” Jayanandan is a serial killer from Trichur who is accused of committing seven murders in and around Trichur Ernakulam border areas. The Thrissur Principal Sessions Court sentenced him to death in June 2008. He escaped prison in 2013 but he was re-captured soon after.
8) Auto Shankar
Gowri Shankar, who is called Auto Shankar (told you, these nicknames don’t go) and his gang, consisting of his younger brother Auto Mohan and associates Eldin and Shivaji, as well as Jayavelu, Rajaraman, Ravi, Palani and Paramasivam, were found guilty of six murders. They were tried for murder of 6 women, the bodies of the victims were either burnt or buried inside residential houses. He got the name Auto Shankar because he tried to abduct one of his victims, disguised a rickshaw driver.
9) Kampatimar Shankariya
Kampatimar Shankariya was an Indian serial killer who was executed for murdering at least 70 people with a hammer. He was convicted and sentenced to death in early 1979. Kampatimar claimed that killing gave him pleasure.
10) Darbara Singh
Darbara Singh is an alleged Indian serial killer, who has been convicted for two murders. During April–October 2004, 23 children were kidnapped in Jalandhar, Punjab. Many of these children were sexually assaulted, and 17 of them were killed. In October, the police arrested Darbara Singh, who had earlier been jailed for nearly a decade in another case involving sexual assault and attempted murder of a child. Singh allegedly confessed that he was behind all these abductions, sexual assaults and murders in 2004. He is currently serving life imprisonment with some of his cases still pending in Courts.
11) Charles Sobhraj
Charles Sobhraj has lead such an eventful life that a movie was made on him! Known as the ‘Bikini Killer’. Charles is a French serial killer of Vietnamese and Indian origin, who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Sobhraj allegedly committed at least a dozen murders. He is currently serving life imprisonment in Nepal.
12) Akku Yadav
Now this case is more interesting because of what happened to the murderer instead of what he did –
Bharat Kalicharan, aka Akku Yadav was an alleged rapist and murderer in India who, on August 13, 2004, was lynched by a mob of around 200 women from Kasturba Nagar. Yadav was stabbed over seventy times, and chili powder and stones were thrown in his face. One of his alleged victims also hacked off his penis. This lynching occurred inside Nagpur district court. The women who killed him claimed that Yadav had been raping and abusing local women with impunity for over a decade, and that the local police had refused to help his victims or pursue charges as Yadav was allegedly bribing them. Yadav had also reportedly murdered at least three people and dumped their bodies on the railroad tracks. The lynching reportedly occurred when Yadav spotted a woman he had raped and called her a prostitute.
If you want to know more about serial killers all over the world (including India), check out this extremely interesting page on Wikipedia and Murderpedia.