BIZARRE CRIMES

Kartikeya & Mateen Hafeez | TNN

Mumbai: By their very definition, bizarre criminal cases are rare to come by, but whenever one comes to light, it shocks society as a whole. The latest was that of a son raping his mother on Tuesday. But there have been others in the past as well. Instances of bodies being stored in refrigerators for years are often considered a prerogative of the West, but ex-IPS officer and lawyer Y P Singh says that is a mistake: “Thankfully there are no serial killers in India but we have our fair share of strange and brutal crimes’’.

In the early stages, a freak case can often stump investigators since there is no apparent reason for it. “While detecting crime, the police work on the premise of a motive and work backwards but the leitmotif of a bizarre case is that it looks completely random and inexplicable to begin with,’’ says Singh.

In 2003, the Bandra-Kurla complex police received a complaint of incest against a 39-year-old man Shahid Khan. A slum dweller, he had divorced his wife and was staying near the police station. Investigators found out that though he had separated from his wife, he had not allowed her to take their three daughters aged 16, 17 and 19 years away.

The girls used to meet their mother once in two months at their maternal uncle’s house. It was the youngest daughter who complained to her mother about being raped by her father. When the mother inquired from the two elder daughters, they confirmed they too had undergone the same ordeal. A complaint was filed and Khan was arrested.

The Nagpada police on July 2 this year recovered the mutilated body of a teenage girl stuffed into gunny bags. The body had been chopped into 18 pieces. The victim’s nose, ears, and lips were chopped and she was beheaded. The legs and arms were in separate gunny bags.

The case was solved after the police found that the gunny bags in which the body was hidden bore the label of a grain shop in Navi Mumbai. During the inquiry it came to light that the bag was supplied to a grocery shop owner in a slum at Cuffe Parade. The police detained the shop owner and found that one of his five daughters was missing for the last few days. During interrogation, the parents of the missing girl admitted to having killed her with the help of her younger sister.

The victim’s father, Munna Khan, who ran a grocery shop, said his daughter was in love with a Dalit boy and despite his warnings she had eloped with him. The enraged Khan had killed her with the help of his wife and younger daughter. The trio are now behind bars.

It was the quintessential Summer Of 42 situation — a young boy being seduced by an older woman. But the aftermath of this episode was played out in a sessions court which sentenced the woman to five years in prison for kidnapping and having illicit intercourse with a minor.

The 45-year-old woman first encountered the boy in May 2000. All of 16 at the time, he had called up a phone sex service and got Rachna, as she called herself, at the other end. Their subsequent phone encounters led to his falling in love with her. The two met and decided to live together. The boy’s parents finally traced him to a house in Thakurli.

FAMILY SECRETS
Borivli resident Sudhakar Bhole (68)’s was found buried behind a brick and mortar cavity in his own bedroom. He was murdered by his family.

LOVE KILLS
Navi Mumbai resident Abhishek Singh was strangled to death and his body stuffed in a refrigerator. Police traced his fiancee’s phone records. The accused turned out to be an MBA aspirant, who had a relationship with Deepika and opposed her wedding to Singh.

The Times of India, November 17, 2006