New Delhi, February 19, 2013- He would help them get a job, provide them meals and pamper them like his children; then he would kill them savagely at the slightest provocation and scatter their mutilated limbs in different parts of Delhi. This is how serial killer Chandrakant Jha functioned.
Jha, said to be involved in many such killings, showed no signs of remorse as a Delhi court ordered the gallows for him last week in two cases. Taking into account the brutality with which the crimes were committed, additional sessions judge Kamini Lau refused to show any leniency saying he cannot be reformed.
His first murder was recorded in 1998 and he remained behind bars for more than three years, but was released in 2002 for lack of evidence. Following this, he went on to murder and mutilate at least six more. Though he was arrested in connection with these six killings, he managed to escape the noose in four of them, again due to lack of evidence.
Jha consistently evaded the police by dismembering his victims and scattering the body parts around the city, making it hard for the cops to identify the victims and the perpetrator of the crimes. He would do all this for the sheer thrill of challenging the law enforcement agencies, and this was his way of taking revenge on the Delhi Police for their “atrocities” against him, according to Jha. In two cases, a note was also recovered with the mutilated body parts found outside Tihar Jail.
Jha used to help young men, usually migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, get petty jobs. He would keep them at his house in JJ Colony, Hyderpur and is said to have treated them like his children. But, at times, petty things such as drinking, smoking, lying and being non-vegetarian would be enough to prompt a murder. He would begin the “death ritual” mostly around 8 pm by tying his victim’s hands on the pretext of punishing him. He would then strangle him using a nunchaku.
After killing his victims, he preferred to have dinner in the same room where his victims lay lifeless. In his own words, he is a specialist in chopping bodies. Following his arrest after his final murder in 2007, he confessed that he had perfected the art of cutting bodies leading to minimum blood oozing out after mutilation.
Though Jha has been sent to the gallows for his gruesome crimes, the court pointed out the necessity for police reforms.
