A parallel investigation by the crime branch of the city police indicates that the number of his victims could be at least twice as many.
MUMBAI: All this while, south Mumbai's serial killer was thought to have killed 10 people. But a parallel investigation by the crime branch of the city police indicates that the number of his victims could be at least twice as many.
A senior officer of the crime branch said: "The statistics branch has been asked to compile details of all those murders between Churchgate and Mumbai Central stations, where victims were stabbed or their heads were smashed. Already, two such murders from 2005 have been included in the 10 cases collated by our team."
Interestingly, the city police, who constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the killings, are slowly shifting focus from key suspect Ravindra Kantrole, who has been in their custody for more than a month now.
A senior police officer said: "Policemen felt dejected when reports of the brain-mapping and polygraph tests run on Kantrole failed to corroborate his complicity in the crimes."
According to the officer, police are reluctant to make public the reports of the tests conducted by the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory at Kalina.
Two more incidents — one on February 25 and the other on February 28 — occurring while Kantrole remained in custody punctured the police claim that he was the serial killer. Subsequently, the stabbing of 20-year-old migrant Raju Pappu Gupta on February 28 led police to another suspect, Salim Sheikh.
A profile of the killer created by the crime branch throws up a pattern indicating his preference for people who are poor and new to the city. The last criterion makes it virtually impossible for investigators to identify the dead person.
Police have failed to establish the identity of any victim apart from taxi driver Vijay Dadasaheb Garud, whose body was found under the railway footbridge near Wankhede Stadium on October 5, 2006. Garud had been hit on the head with a blunt object.
"The stabbing of Gupta made the SIT realise that the killer eluding the Mumbai police is not a beer man but a 'catch me if you can' murderer who feels he can butcher with impunity. The beer and food are used to draw unsuspecting migrants into the trap," the officer said.
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