Nine women have been found murdered over 14 months in a rural patch of Bareilly district, prompting the police to suspect that the crimes could be linked to a serial killer.
The victims were murdered in a radius of 25 kilometres in villages that fall under two police stations. The profiles of the victims are similar – all aged between 45 and 55.
The victims were killed similarly. They were found strangled in fields around noon. Their clothes were dishevelled but were not sexually assaulted, reported TOI.
UP DGP Prashant Kumar told the newspaper that the police have been investigating these cases for six months. They haven’t ruled out the possibility of a serial killer because of a similar modus operandi.
“Our teams have been investigating this case for six months and have not ruled out the possibility of a serial killer due to the nearly identical modus operandi of the murders,” he said.
Who is a serial killer?
A serial killer is a criminal who murders two or more people over a significant period without a motive. The main motivation for the killings of a serial killer is psychological gratification. Most of these serial killers display patterns in the type of victims and the way they commit murders.
Serial killer in Delhi
India has had a lot of serial killers since independence. The most recent was Ravinder Kumar, who was arrested for raping and murdering a six-year-old girl in July 2015.
Ravinder Kumar later admitted to raping and killing at least 30 more children across Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh over eight years. However, what astounded investigators the most was the “vivid and accurate” descriptions of these crimes that he remembered.
“Among crimes he confessed to was the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl in Hathras in 2013. In that case, Ravinder described the exact location and date on which he had committed the crime. When I called the Hathras police, they confirmed the details, and said the girl’s father was currently under trial for the rape-murder,” an officer told HT last year.