Home Indian Muslim Tihar serial killer arrested

Tihar serial killer arrested

By IANS

New Delhi : A serial killer who used to dump his victims' bodies outside the Tihar Jail in Delhi was arrested Sunday, Delhi Police said.

Confirming the arrest, Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat said the serial killer was identified as Chandrakant Jha, a native of north Bihar.

Listed as a "bad character" or a person with known criminal records at the Adarsh Nagar police station in northwest Delhi, Jha had committed four murders and dumped his victims' torso and dismembered body parts outside the Tihar Jail premises in west Delhi, said police officials.

Jha was also involved in two other murder cases, police said.

Police said Jha, who described himself as victim of police excesses and used to leave notes challenging police to catch him, was arrested from Haiderpur area in north Delhi.

He used to drive a motorized rickshaw, which he also used to survey localities around the jail to ascertain the time when there was no police patrolling so that he could safely dump his victims' bodies.

Police said Jha, a former Tihar inmate, had dumped torsos and mutilated bodies stuffed in gunny bags on four different occasions outside Tihar Jail.

On each occasion, he had left an abusive note accusing police of implicating him in false cases and daring them to track him down.

The body of his last victim was found outside Tihar's gate number one around 6.30 a.m. on May 17.

The first mutilated body, stuffed in a sack, was found Dec 29, 2005 in front of the compound wall at Tihar's jail number 4.

A torso in a sack was found near gate number 3 with an accompanying abusive note in October 2006, while the third torso was found on April 25 this year near gate number 3.

In all four instances, the killer had packed the torsos in sacks, which were spotted early in the morning outside the jail. Each of the victims was a man in his late 20s or early 30s and from the lower strata of society, said police.

Police had come to know of the last body, dumped on May 17, through an abusive phone call made from a public booth in Tagore Garden informing them about the body.

In the accompanying letter, the killer had vowed to kill more men and dump them outside Tihar. He had said he was sentenced to a jail term at Tihar for a crime he had not committed and had accused jail authorities of treating him badly during his time there.