A Study In The Macabre

Twenty years ago, the tandoor murder case shocked the nation. The Sheena Bora murder still shocks. What’s with this spate of gruesome killings—a Thane man kills 14 members of his family, a Delhi college girl is murdered and thrust in a ventilation shaft—that’s making headlines?

Hasnain Warekar, 35, a chartered accountant from Kasarwadavli, Thane, slit the throats of 14 members of his family, including seven children, in the wee hours of February 27 and then committed suicide. What was wrong with him is still unclear.

In Kolkata this January, Jessica Fonseca and her 16-year-old twin sons were found dead at their house. Her husband Neil confessed that he had murdered the trio with dumbbells and a knife. The killings were apparently triggered by financial distress. 

When police raided the house of Shyam Bahadur Verma, 33, in Surat, on January 24, they found his wife Kirandevi, 30, cut into pieces. Verma had allegedly slit her throat after a quarrel and then  cut off her head and limbs. The remains were then chopped into pieces and some bits dropped into a rivulet nearby.

After a stray dog carried a piece of human limb to police officers in Khaderpet in Warangal, Telangana, the bodies of 14-year-old tribal girls Banothu Priyanka and Banothu Bhoomika were recovered. Their bodies were found chopped to pieces in a forest, 25 kms from their native place.

Ashish Kumar, 27, slit his girlfriend’s throat after a stroll at a tea-estate and then clicked a selfie with her. Police say he suspected the girl was having affairs with other men. He uploaded the dead girl’s photo as his display picture on Whatsapp.

A headless female body was found in a dustbin in a Chennai suburb. The police discovered it belonged to small-time actress Sasirekha after her husband admitted to killing her and then dumping her severed head in a canal and her torso in a bin.

A merchant navy seaman murdered his wife and her lover. Dhruv Kant Thakur, 29, had a verbal spat with his wife and her lover at her place. In a fit of rage, he killed the man with a knife and then went on to smother his wife with a pillow.

Gurmeet Kaur, a resident of Hoshiarpur, Punjab, admitted to bludgeoning her four-year-old son against the train wall and throwing the body out of the train. She said she had no affection for the child and killed him on her way to Delhi.

A man in Shivamogga city in Karnataka attempted to kill one of his daughters while she was asleep. The reason: she was in love with a taxi-driver from another caste. However, she was not the one who died as the father inadvertently stabbed her younger sister, who was 16 years old.

A gynaecologist at a district hospital in Rampur in eastern UP killed a baby by severing its head while aiding a woman in child delivery. The doctor is said to have used a rope to pull out the baby when its leg first emerged. The infant’s head was then surgically removed and its body discarded in a bin.

Naveen Khatri of north-west Delhi took his girlfriend Arzoo Singh, 23, on a ride out of town, strangled her with a dupatta, brought the body back in his car and stuffed it in a ventilation shaft from where it was recovered four days later.

Compiled by Priyadarshini Sen and Siddhartha Mishra