LUCKNOW: After over two decades of investigation and trial, a Lucknow court on Friday sentenced cannibal Raja Kolander alias Ram Niranjan and his aide Bakshraj Kol to life imprisonment and fined Rs 1 lakh each for a chilling double murder committed in 2000 in the city’s Naka area.
Having more than 20 murder cases registered against him, Raja Kolander is believed to collect skulls, eat human flesh. Not only this, he even drank blood soup. In the 2000s, serial killer Raja Kolandar had become synonymous to terror.
The ADJ court of Judge Rohit Singh, who had convicted both the accused on Monday, delivered the quantum of punishment on Friday, by awarding life sentence to both.
The murder of journalist Manoj Singh, 22, and his driver Ravi Srivastava had shaken the UP police in 2000. Investigation revealed that the motive for murder was Manjo Singh’s friendship with Raja Kolander's sister and jealousy over Manoj's growing fame.
When police investigated deeper, many skeletons came out tumbling one after another. Raja Kolander had ventured into the dark alleys of crime and gained notoriety owing to his obsession with power. He was accused of targeting victims and allegedly consuming their brains making it one of the darkest and gruesome criminal acts.
Raja Kolander was born as Ram Niranajan Kol, a resident of Prayagraj. Hailing from the Kol tribe, he was once employed at an ordnance factory in the state.
Calling himself a king, Raja Kolander believed that he had the right to punish anyone he did not like. His eccentricity could be gauged from the fact that he used to call his wife Phoolan Devi, after the infamous bandit queen, and his son was named as Adalat and Zamanat.
Kolander had also been convicted of multiple murders. While arresting him in the year 2000, the cops had recovered human skulls from his farmhouse.
The first conviction of Kolander and his brother-in-law Bakshraj came through in 2012 for the cold-blooded murder of a journalist, Dhirendra Singh. The journalist was lured, shot dead, mutilated and buried by the criminals. The Allahabad local court had sentenced Kolander to life imprisonment, calling it a rarest of rare case after 14 human skulls were recovered from his house.