Atrocious Crimes that shook India
What precisely is a criminal offence is defined by the criminal law of each country but what classifies as a violation of humanity is a conundrum that no etymology in the law can decipher. Crimes as legal terms deal with the aftermath of of incidents that leave people distraught, angst and most possibly, dead. Every crime, from the most insignificant to the most gruesome, leaves behind a trail of breadcrumbs that the Sherlocks of our society must unearth with utmost care and conscience without the better judgement of their gut feelings or the guts of the victims spewed in innumerable crimes.
The fact that the following crimes have sent shivers down most peoples’ spines whilst taking both the nation and the media by storm seem highly unlikely at first glance but as the details unravel, it is only a matter of time before the insides of your stomach churn with angst, disgust and sympathy.
CASE 1: RAMAN RAGHAV: The serial killer.
In 1968, the Mumbai Police noticed a series of murders in the northern suburbs of the city and it didn’t take long to realise that a serial killer was at large. The pattern was everywhere. Slum-dwellers and the poor in derelict hutments, isolated shanties, and pavements, were killed by having their skulls bashed in with a “hard and blunt instrument.”
A series of similar murders had taken place in 1965-66 in the eastern suburbs of Bombay, where 19 people had been attacked. Nine succumbed to their injuries. A suspicious-looking man lurking in the area was picked up for questioning. Once Raman Raghav’s criminal records were dug into, they showed charges of robbery and murder. The murder charge was never proved. Combing through a city like Bombay for a homeless man, who looks like any other, was a daunting task. But the hysteria that had gripped Bombay residents was too urgent. Rumours about a serial killer with superhuman powers spread. Some said he could turn into any animal he wanted, some claimed to have seen him sleeping in a tree in Aarey Colony. Curiously enough, Raghav was nabbed by former police offer Alex Fialho in Bhendi Bazaar and the confessions that followed proved that he was mentally ill. Raman Raghav was diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia. Raman Raghav was sent to Yerawada Jail where he died in 1988 of kidney failure after 19 years of incarceration. Oddly enough, in all his years in jail, he was never involved in any act of violence.
CASE 2: SUSHIL SHARMA: The tandoor murderer.
Sushil Sharma, a former Delhi Pradesh Youth Congress president, was convicted in 2003 for the murder of his wife Naina Sahni, a former functionary of the Delhi unit of the Mahila Congress.
The murder took place in July 1995. Sharma had been in a live-in relationship with Naina for some time before the two got married, with him choosing to keep the wedding under wraps. Sharma suspected her involvement with one of her classmates and on July 2, 1995 Sharma reportedly saw Naina on the phone as he entered the house. She hung up, but he hit redial to find the call answered by Naina’s former classmate and Congress colleague, Matloob Karim. He took the body to a restaurant called Bagiya and tried to dispose it off with the restaurant manager, Keshav Kumar. The body was chopped into pieces and put in a tandoor (clay oven) to burn. Police arrested Keshav Kumar but Sharma managed to flee. He surrendered on July 10, 1995. The case also involved the use of DNA evidence to establish the identity of the victim. The case went to trial later that year with the judgment in what came to be known as the ‘Tandoor Murder Case’. In 2003, when he was awarded the death penalty. The Supreme Court in 2013 commuted his death penalty to life time imprisonment.
CASE 3: STONEMAN: The most elusive serial killer.
The Stoneman is so far the most elusive and mysterious serial killer in the Indian crime history. The police found no clues and to date does not even know whether it was the work of one man, a group or even if it was a man or a woman. Between the years 1985-87, 12 pavement dwellers were killed while in sleep. Residents of Sion and Matunga area were terrified by the killings. People, who walked early in the morning as a routine, were afraid to leave their houses. Speculations rose as the Sion area is a hub of tantric rituals and people often come across leftovers from tantric processes on the street. Police were puzzled by these killings and did not have much evidence to work with. A victim was identified as an eye witness, who was lucky enough to escape the attack. The sole survivor could not provide any help, as the attack happened in a dimly lit area and did not catch a glimpse of the killer. The victims were rag pickers and beggars who slept alone on the streets. The scene was carefully chosen so that there are no witnesses. In most cases, the victims could not be identified since they had no family members or relatives.
A big heavy stone is all they found. The killer used a heavy stone to crush the head of his victims. The victims were not bludgeoned. There was a survivor but he didn’t see the head of the killer. Police found a heavy stone weighing as much as 30 kg near all the victims.Similar modus operandi was seen in recent 2009 Stoneman murders in Guwahati. One theory was that the killer was operating on the instructions of a tantric to attain spiritual goals. However, this theory was disputed as the modus operandi was to crush the face and not decapitation. Later, a movie was made on this theory which claimed to reveal new evidence that was initially covered up by the police. The police and the director of the film both agreed that the movie was a work fiction based on reality. Kolkata police profiled him to be a well-built man of good height. Despite the increase in patrol in both Mumbai and Kolkata, the killer was not found. The crime rate dropped to a considerable extent but the Stoneman still eluded the police and was never found.
CASE 4: NITHARI KAND.
On 12 February 2009, both the accused—Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic servant Surinder Koli—were found guilty of the 8 February 2005 murder of Rimpa Haldar, 14, by a special sessions court in Ghaziabad. This verdict left the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) red faced, as the CBI had earlier given a clean chit to Moninder Singh Pandher in all its chargesheets. Both the accused Moninder Singh Pandher and Surinder Koli were given the death sentence on 13 February 2009, as the case was classified as “rarest of rare”. Forensic reports of the 17 sets of skulls and bones recovered showed that 11 of the killed were girls. Doctors at Noida Government Hospital revealed that there was a “butcher-like precision” in the chopping of the bodies. The post mortem reports revealed that there had been a pattern in the killings. A gory revelation was made by the AIIMS on 6 February 2007. It was also concluded that there were 19 skulls in all; 16 complete and 3 damaged. The bodies had been cut into three pieces before being disposed of by the servant. The CBI sources said that the manservant, after strangling the victims, severed their heads and threw them in the drain behind the house of his employer. Sources also revealed that he used to keep the viscera in a polythene bag before disposing of it in a drain, so as to prevent detection.
Koli was found guilty of the 25 October 2006 murder of Arti Prasad, 7, guilty of the 10 April 2006 murder of Rachna Lal, guilty of the murder of Deepali Sarkar, 12, guilty of the 4 June 2005 murder of Chhoti Kavita, 5, and given a fifth death sentence. The Supreme Court of India upheld their death sentence. In July 2014, the President of India rejected the mercy petitions filed by 6 convicts. On 3 September 2014, the Court issued a death warrant against Koli in Nithari case. On the evening of 4 September 2014 Surinder Koli was transferred to Meerut Jail because of the absence of hanging facilities at Dasna Jail, Ghaziabad. He was to be hanged on 12 September 2014. In 2014, the SC had stopped his hanging at a midnight hearing, saying inordinate delay in execution was valid grounds for commutation.
CASE 5: AARUSHI TALWAR DOUBLE MURDER.
The Aarushi murder case till date remains the most mysterious criminal case in the Indian judicial system. The whole story behind the crime is so confusing that it’s simply hard to put it in a few words. According to the latest court verdict, Aarushi was murdered by her parents Rajesh Talwar and Nupur Talwar when they discovered Aarushi’s illicit relationship with their domestic help Hemraj. Hemraj was also murdered on the same night as Aarushi by Rajesh Talwar. The autopsy revealed that Aarushi’s head was smashed using a golf club and her throat slit using a kukri. According to the CBI’s closure report, “Rajesh in his written complaint had alleged that his servant Hemraj had killed his daughter in the night of 15/16 May 2008 and that he was missing.”
However, just the next day, on 17 May 2008, Hemraj’s body was found on the terrace of Talwar residence. The CBI took Rajesh into custody and questioned him, but the interrogation reached a dead end. The CBI’s report states: “During this period, Rajesh was interrogated in detail but no recovery was made and no evidence was found against him. His judicial custody was extended on the request of CBI till 11 July 2008, when finally CBI submitted to the court that ‘the scientific examination results could not connect accused Rajesh with the crime’.”
In the sequence of events mentioned in the CBI report, on the insistence of his wife Nupur, Rajesh planned to gift Aarushi a digital camera that night (on 15 May) itself instead of waiting for her birthday on 24 May. Aarushi received her present and went to the spare room, while her parents went to their bedroom. As per the CBI report, no direct evidence exists between the intervening night of 15 and 16 May. On the basis of circumstantial evidence, the CBI, in its report, said that “both (Nupur and Rajesh) were weeping and telling maid Bharti ‘Dekho Hemraj kya karke gaya hai?'”. Clearly, the parents blamed the domestic servant for their daughter’s death, with Rajesh even telling the police that Hemraj had committed the murder and had gone missing. Talwar even insisted that the police should search for Hemraj’s whereabouts. Without seeking a murder weapon or even a motive, it seemed that the Talwars blamed Hemraj for their daughter’s murder. It could be so since Talwar had told the CBI that he had found his daughter and Hemraj in an “objectionable position”, according to Times of India.
The parents have been awarded life time imprisonment sentences by the CBI Special Court but they have challenged this judgement in the Allahabad High Court.
CASE 6: NIRBHAYA GANGRAPE CASE.
Nirbhaya and her male friend had just finished watching American survival drama “Life of Pi”, little knowing that their own lives will change forever after moving out of the south Delhi theatre on the cold and dark night of December 16, 2012. As the 23-year-old physiotherapist intern and Awindra Pratap Pandey waited at Munirka in south Delhi looking for an auto-rickshaw to reach their home in Dwarka, an off-duty charter bus, with six male occupants, including the driver, stopped by and offered them a ride. The bus moved in a direction which was off the route. The unsuspecting friends noticed something was wrong as the doors of the vehicle had been shut tightly. Pandey, who spoke about the incident later, objected. He was shouted down. But he resisted and a scuffle broke out as the men, who were drunk, began molesting Nirbhaya – the name given to the woman later by the media which means fearless. Nirbhaya’s friend was knocked down with an iron rod. What happened later shook the nation, sparked off widespread protests and led many women to break their silence over sexual violence that goes widely unreported in the country.
As Pandey lay half unconscious, the drunk men dragged Nirbhaya to the rear of the moving bus and took turns to rape her. As she fought back, one of attackers – a juvenile – inserted a rusted, L-shaped rod – used with a wheel jack – into her private parts, pulling and ripping her intestines apart. Her medical reports later revealed that she had septic injuries on her abdomen and genital organs also. Done with the savagery, the attackers then threw the two out of the moving bus and even tried to run the vehicle over the half-naked blood-soaked woman. But her friend, himself injured, pulled her aside on to the pavement.A passerby found the two laying half dead and informed Delhi Police. Doctors at the Safdarjung Hospital found the woman with only five per cent intestines left inside her body. Nirbhaya, born and brought up in Delhi to parents from an Uttar Pradesh village, was flown to a Singapore hospital. She died there on December 29. Her friend survived after being treated for broken ribs.Fast-track courts were introduced and even stalking, voyeurism and intentional touching were listed as crimes. The accused were quickly caught and identified as Ram Singh, Mukesh Singh, Vinay Gupta, Pawan Gupta, Akshay Thakur and a juvenile. Ram Singh, the bus driver, committed suicide in Tihar Jail during the trial.
CASE 7: KATHUA RAPE CASE.
The Kathua rape case refers to the abduction, rape, and murder of an 8-year-old girl, Asifa Bano, in Rasana village near Kathua in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in January 2018. A chargesheet for the case has been filed, the accused have been arrested and the trial began in Kathua on 16 April 2018. In January, retired revenue official Sanji Ram hatched a plan to dislodge the Bakarwal community from Rasana area in Kathua district. He took Special Police Officer Deepak Khajuria (Deepu) and his juvenile nephew in confidence. Sanji Ram provoked his nephew to unleash on Bakarwals who had earlier thrashed him. Ram asked his nephew to kidnap Asifa from behind their house as she’d often go around the house to let her horses graze. Juvenile shared his plan with friend Parvesh Kumar(Mannu). The next day Mannu and he went to Hiranagar to buy sedative tablets and local drug substances. Juvenile then spots the girl asking another woman if she had seen her horses and told the girl that he had and lead her into the forest along with his uncle and raped her after sedating her. Mannu also tried to rape her. The 8 year old’s parents had arrived at the temple looking for their missing daughter. Ram suggested that she must have gone off to some relative’s place. The juvenile then called up Ram’s son, Vishal Jangotra, in Meerut, and asked him if he wanted to rape her. Vishal arrived in Rasana at 6AM the next day. The police began a search with the Bakarwals but Ram took one of the officers into confidence and settled with him a bribe to give SI Anand Dutta. Around 8:30AM the Vishal and his father went to the temple along with Mannu and the juvenile. She was then raped by them and in the evening decided that it was time to kill her wherein SPO Deepak and the juvenile raped her again and Deepak strangulated her with her stole and the juvenile hit her on the head with a stone twice after which the body was dumped in the jungle.