IN/New Delhi – Chandrakant Jha, who was detained on Sunday on suspicion of being the serial killer who had been placing dismembered bodies outside Tihar Jail. today confessed his crime to police.
“He (Jha) was arrested from his hideout in Hyderpur, near Shalimar Bagh, on Sunday. He has confessed to murdering seven people… He used to chop off their bodies and dump the torso in front of Tihar Jail,” Joint Commissioner of Police Rajesh Kumar told the media today.
Police say it was the sheer thrill of killing that drove Jha (40), who would buy vegetables in bulk and sell it to retailers, to kill some of his employees. Police have not been able identify Jha’s victims; the serial killer has merely disclosed their names and is mum on other details.
Police have videographed Jha’s confession in which the killer has described the way he killed his victims and the reason why he killed them.
The 40-year-old used to employ young men, usually migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and as Kumar put it: “All his victims were his employees and Jha used to keep them in JJ Colony, Hyderpur. He says he used to take care of them like children and gave them shelter. But at times petty things would annoy him. And the punishment for such a breach of behavior was death.”
The JCP says Jha has admitted to killing his victims for reasons as trivial as their eating meat or drinking alcohol.
Describing the way Jha killed his victims, Kumar said: “He would first tie the hands of his victims on the pretext of punishing them. And since they were all so close to him, the victims never expected that they would meet a fatal end.”
The killings would commence around 8 pm.
After tying up his victims, he would strangle them using a nan chaku (a chain attached to two wooden handles used by martial arts practitioners).
Jha would then have his dinner in the same room and afterwards, cut off the victim’s head and limbs.
“Jha claimed he was an expert in cutting up bodies. He used to cut them in a way to ensure that minimum blood oozed out of the body,” Kumar said.
The killer would then pack off the body parts in a plastic bag. And around 4 am, he would load the body parts onto his scooter engine-fitted cycle rickshaw and drive till Tihar to dump the torso. Astonishingly, no one spotted Jha dumping the torsos near Tihar Jail.
“He used to dump the head and limbs in the Yamuna. In one of the latest cases, he dumped the limbs of a victim, Dilip, near Tis Hazari court,” Kumar said.
Who is Chandrakant Jha?
Chandrakant Jha, the man Delhi Police claims is the serial killer who dumped six bodies in front of Tihar Jail in the past six years, was born in Ghosai village of Bihar’s Madhepura district. Having studied up to Class X he came to Delhi in 1986 and started working as a labourer in Subzi Mandi.
Jha has married twice—he abandoned his first wife, and within a year married one Mamta, who came from Madhubani, Bihar. The couple has five daughters aged between 2 and 10 years.
The police say he changed residence routinely, always living away from his family—he was based in Hyderpur, while his family lived in Alipur.
Jha was involved in three cases of burglaries in 1997; three Arms Act cases were also registered against him. In 1998, he was arrested on his first murder charge. He remained in jail till 2002 but the case ended in his acquittal.
The victims
1998: Jha’s first murder was Mangal, alias Aurangzeb, in Adarsh Nagar. He was arrested and remained in jail till 2002
June 2003: Murdered one of his associates, Shekhar, accusing him of being a drunkard and liar. He threw the body in Alipur
November 2003: Murdered Umesh, who worked with him, for lying and betraying him, Jha has told the cops. He threw the body near gate number 1 of Tihar Jail. A case was registered on November 20, 2003 at Hari Nagar Police Station
November 2005: Killed his third associate, Guddu, because he did not like the latter’s extravagant lifestyle and the fact that he smoked ganja. The body was found near Sulabh Sauchalya in Mongol Puri, northwest Delhi
October 2006: Amit was the fourth associate to be murdered; Jha told police that he killed Amit for being a womaniser. The torso was thrown in front of Tihar Jail on October 20
April 2007: The fifth associate to be murdered was Upender, allegedly for having an affair with the daughter of one his friends.
May 2007: Dilip, the sixth associate to be murdered, for Jha did not like the fact that Dilip ate non-vegetarian food. His body was found outside Tihar on May 18.