Bhora-kalan
maxi-cab killers
By
Maxwell Pereira
mfjpkamath@gmail.com
What
an irony! The village of Bhora-kalan off Manesar in India's Haryana
state - home to the Om Shanti Retreat Centre, the Northern India
complex of the Prajapita Brahma Kumari Ishwariya Vidyalaya famous
for religious discourses preaching finer aspects of mind, body,
medicine and meditation for life and living to make better human
beings of people - is in the news for wrong reasons.
All
nine accused arrested for committing an unimaginable number of
about 35 murders since January 2006 in and around Gurgaon - India's
new Megapolis, hail from Bhora-kalan. A village, former Haryana
Director General of Police BR Lall tells me, whose people enjoyed
a reputation for being peace loving and law abiding for the past
over 50 years! The killers' modus operandi was simple. They targeted
people seeking lifts at night - offering a free ride to a person
who looked like an outsider, strangled him, stole his cash and
valuables, and then dumped his body in a manhole or an open drain.
According
to Gurgaon SSP Haneef Qureshi the killers who owned vehicles,
operated a maxi-cab service during the day - and at night moved
around the city looking for their prey. While 12 of these killings
were committed in October alone, one of the killers has spoken
of an estimated 35 or more killings of which, after a while, they
"lost count".
The
arrests and recovery of bodies followed a lead the police got
while investigating the latest body found - of Ashish Bhagoria,
a 23-year-old MBA from Gwalior whose decomposed body was recovered
from a manhole in Gurgaon on October 29. The miscreants slipped
up when they used Ashish's mobile to talk to a friend in a neighbouring
town, and the police grabbed this slender clue to lead them to
the gang. Initially five were picked up - Rohtash alias Langoor,
Lalit alias Kaloo, Mukesh alias Ghassar, Pramod alias Bhuria and
Ravi, and eventually the rest - Vikram alias Vicky alias Kanchi
and Harkesh alias Julfi, Dalchand alias Danny (25) and Bhudhu
alias Budhram (23) - all belonging to Bhora-kalan.
The
quick succession with which actual bodies kept tumbling out of
wayside drains, pits and shrubs, posed a problem for investigators
to keep pace and link them to actual registered cases with the
identity of victims established. The police claim to have linked
so far 28 of the confessed crimes to actual registered cases -
14 of murder and three others registered as accident cases in
police stations of Gurgaon, and the rest elsewhere in neighbouring
districts including one in Delhi.
Poor
public transport facilities and no government control on taxis
plying in Gurgaon worked to the advantage of the serial killers
to offer lifts to unsuspecting victims. All victims they murdered
were looking for transport during late hours to get to their destinations.
Alarmingly,
members of the gang have told the police there are others similarly
engaged in the business of murdering and looting commuters. Police
admit they have little control on cabs that ply on highways and
even internal roads, as many do not have commercial permit, and
are difficult to track down even though they ply openly without
proper number plates and with drivers perhaps previously involved
in crime.
What
amazes all is the ease with which the nine miscreants went about
snuffing out lives of innocent wayside strangers - ostensibly
for peanuts, as they killed first and looked for spoils later.
In some cases for gains as low as Rs.20 from the victim's pocket.
Amidst
public outcry to hang these killers, there is shock and awe in
the killers' village, with disbelief writ large on faces of the
villagers and especially the families involved. The very families
of the killers are said to be leading the rest of the villagers
in disowning them. In the face of all this, there are reports
also of deep remorse expressed with a death wish by a majority
of the gang, themselves asking for the extreme penalty to be imposed
on them.
For
experts studying these crimes the situation is intriguingly incomprehensible.
While the sheer numbers may tend to categorise these as serial
murders, the killers do not exactly fit into the mould of psychopaths
who are the hallmark in most serial killings. Neither are these
murders for gain, as gain as the primary motive is still a question
mark. The chilling manner in which the killers matter-of-factly
shrug and admit that after a while it became just a compulsive
habit to kill once the initial fear and queasiness following the
first killing was overcome, speaks volumes of the strange circumstances
and mental frame of the killers. This renders them fit material
for criminologists, psychoanalysts and social scientists to study.
13.11.2006: Copyright
© Maxwell Pereira; 3725 Sector 23, Gurgaon-122002; tel: 0124-5111026;
Available at mfjpkamath@gmail.com
or maxpk@vsnl.com & http:/www.
maxwellpereira.com
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