TRUE CRIME STORIES OF INDIA
Crimes in India are not something new it has been in our society since time immemorial. Crimes ranging from simple burglary to heinous crimes against society and some pretty gruesome serial killers have always prevailed in our society. So I am bringing you this blog after quite a time of research through the cases with two gripping crimes. They might seem at times like complete crime fiction but they are completely true and have occurred in our own country.
CYANIDE MALLIKA – THE TALE OF GOLD [1]
This story is about the countries’ first convicted female serial killer. KD. Kempamma also knows by other names like Jayamma, Laxmi, or the very famous Cyanide Mallika who murdered at least six to eight women who fell prey to their own wrong superstitious belief.
- Kempamma was born in a small town of Kaggalipura in Karnataka and came from a poor family that witnessed a lot of poverty and did not finish her schooling. Kempamma was married at a young age to a tailor whose name was Devraj, it is claimed that she had three children and his husband abandoned her and kicked her off the house in 1998 after Kempamma’s chit fund business faced a big loss. She worked as domestic help and have been accused a lot of times of stealing from those houses she went to work and in fact once she was jailed for six months for trying to steal some costly jewelry from one of the houses. Kempamma required a lot of money so that she could buy gold with it as she was in love with gold. Kempamma left home and did odd jobs until she started working as a gold smith’s assistance and it was here where she was introduced to Potassium cyanide. The cyanide is used to clean the jewelry and a dose of 200 to 300mg can kill a human being within a few seconds, this was what became her weapon for the crimes she was about to commit.
Her first murder was on 19th October 1999 and the victim was a 30-year-old woman named Mamatha Rajan. Kempamma pretended to be a saintly woman who offered to a mandala puja to get rid of Mamatha’s problems, and during this puja, Kempamma gave Mamatha the holy water which was mixed with cyanide and murdered the woman, removed all her jewelry, and left. This is how she continued her consequent murders and also insisted the women wear jewelry for the puja. Her next known victim was after eight long years in November 2007 in Karnataka in a temple named Kabalamma. Her victim this time was a 52-year-old woman who was worried about her missing granddaughter, she was lured by Kempamma to do a puja which will help her, and foolishly even she fell prey to such believes and became a victim to her vicious plan. After she died she was again looted off her gold and Kempamma left. Her next victim was 60 years old Yashodhamma who was a patient with Asthma and Kempamma offered to cure her; this murder took place in December of 2007 in Bangalore. Her next victim was Muniamma from Yelahanka on 15th December 2007 who was murdered by forcefully induced cyanide in her mouth at her place. On 18th December a guest of the temple complained that a foul smell was coming from the rooms in the Parvati block where further investigation brought in the body of dead Muniamma. And within this time Muniamma’s son registered a complaint about his missing mother who didn’t return from her pilgrimage. When the police went to his son with photos of Muniamma, his son realized that in the photos all her mother’s jewelry was missing, now the police figured out the motive and also the way that the murder was done. But unknown to this fact Kempamma murdered another woman meanwhile. Her name was Pillama aged 60 and her next victim was Nagaveni, a 30-year-old woman who was trying to have a child and Kempamma was to do a puja to help her get a son, her body was discovered on 18th December 2007. The police meanwhile discovered that all the murders were connected with a woman who called herself with different names and slowly was reaching their way to her. They realized the motive of stealing jewelry and informed all gold shops if someone came in to sell gold and on 30th December she was caught in a bus stand while she was trying to sell cell phones. Later she confessed all her doings to the police, a charge sheet was filed and her trial began where she confessed to another murder between the years 1999 and 2007. She was awarded the death sentence in March 2012 which was commuted to life imprisonment in August 2012.
NITHARI KAAND- THE HOUSE OF THE DEMON [2]
This is the famous case of Nithari, a small village in Noida in the state of Uttar Pradesh which haunted people for a long time during the years 2006 and 2007. House no. D5 in sector 31 of Noida was considered as haunted, the house was in a terrible state and local people avoided it. This was the house of businessman Moninder Singh Pandher who lived there with his help Surinder Koli and turned that place into a demon’s house with the crimes that were being carried on there. The Nithari case unfolded during the peak of winter in UP. with the discovery of the body remains from the drain behind a villa in sector 31 of Noida in the village of Nithari. The village of Nithari was mostly composed of people who have migrated to find jobs in the big city, they were poor and worked as laborers and domestic help, and compared to this, sector 31 of Noida was quite a posh area with wealthy people living there.
The whole incident started with children going missing between 2004 and 2006, most of these children were girls and all the children were from the families of Nithari. The complaints made to the police by the parents of the missing children went unresponded, and also at times denied to make FIR. telling their parents that their children have simply eloped even in cases when the children were minors. Among the children were a 3-year-old boy named Harsh, a 7-year-old girl named Arti, a 9 year and 12-year-old girl named Rachna Lal, and Deepali Sarkar. Besides the children, there were two adults Pinki Sarkar who was 20 years old, and Payal. The revealing of the mystery of missing children started after the disappearing of the 27 years old girl named Payal, who was apparently looking for a job of domestic help and was referred to the house in D5 in sector 31 of Noida and this time Payal’s father managed to get an order from the chief judicial magistrate to lodge a missing person’s complaint since the police were refusing to take any kind of actions. When the police went to visit house no. D5 there was a disgusting stench all around that area and the place where the children were going missing was pinpointed by that time, but the police failed to get any clue from there.
Later in the year 2006 people of Nithari got frustrated with the police not taking any action and approached the president of a welfare organization of sector 31 SC. Mishra and informed him about the suspect they were having on Surinder Koli in connection with the disappearance of their children. On their complaint, a large sewage drain around the house from where the stench was coming was searched and almost immediately rotten body parts were discovered from there. Surender Koli was taken into custody on 29th December 2006 and the police conducted more investigation in the scene and during this time the news became viral among all people and media channels. Already three skulls and several body parts have been discovered by now and further investigation led to the discovery of bones, clothes, footwear, and more body parts all from and around that area. Once Surender Koli in custody was interrogated he immediately started confessing to the murders of the missing children and said that he was doing all that at the request of his boss Moninder Singh Pandher. Eventually, he confessed to killing more people. On searching the grounds of the house 15 skulls along with clothes belonging to the victims were found, a knife was also found. The parents of the missing children crowded in the police station to identify their children from remains of clothes and dismembered body parts. Koli also confessed to raping his victims before and most of the time after killing them by strangulation, after that, he used to cut their body parts and dispose of them, he also confessed to eating the meat of his victims once. Later CBI took up the case and a lot of fraud on the parts of police was exposed and it seemed that Moninder Singh Pandher has tried a lot to cover up his acts from the police by illegally paying them off. Later even Pandher got arrested and was found guilty in 5 cases out of all other. Later on 24th July 2017, both Pandher and Koli were awarded death sentence in the court of Ghaziabad.
Author(s) Name: Piyasha Das (Amity University, Kolkata)
- https://indiankanoon.org/doc/659859/?type=print
- https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1310022/
- The Deadly Dozen by Anirban Bhattacharya
- Trials of truth by Pinky Anand
- Queens of crime by Sushant Singh and Kulpreet Yadav
- https://www.lawnn.com/moninder-singh-pandher-surendra-koli-vs-state-u-p-nithari-kand-case/
- https://indiankanoon.org/doc/151419510/
- https://murderpedia.org/female.M/m/mallika.htm
