BANGALORE: Two years after the country’s first woman serial killer was arrested in December 2007, the police have succeeded in arresting another serial killer.
The accused, Mohan Kumar, used a modus operandi similar to that of Cyanide Mallika to kill the women.
Mohan Kumar alias Anand (46), trapped women using his gift of the gab.
The bodies of two of his victims were also found in a bus stand.
Mallika, who committed her first crime in October 1999, was finally arrested by the Bangalore police on December 30, 2007 while she was trying to sell stolen jewellery. Her modus operandi was to trap women in distress, take them to temples and give them food mixed with cyanide.
After killing the women, she would decamp with their jewellery. Kempamma had killed more than 10 women.
Bangalore police, however, said that unlike the Mallika case which proved difficult to be solved, Mohan Kumar has admitted early to his crimes committed for the past five years. As he was unable to recollect the exact dates or even the years of the crimes and in some cases even the names of the victims, police are yet to identify the victims of Bangalore.
The bodies of all the victims of Mallika were found in temples, while those of Mohan’s victims were found in bus stands. All of Mohan’s murders were thought to be suicides by women in distress.
Mallika started committing the crimes, after incurring a huge loss in the chit fund business and separating from her husband. In Mohan’s case, it was when a girl refused to marry him and he tried to kill her by throwing her into the Netravati river.
He took to serial killing in 2003, after facing trial in that attempt to murder case.
DG&IGP, Ajai Kumar Singh, in a release, said that the case was a rude awakening to young women falling into the trap of such offenders. It must be noted that such victims had not kept their dear ones informed about their relationship with Mohan, he said.