New Delhi man admits to being serial child killer
Labourer says he killed 15 children while he was drunk
NEW DELHI // A man arrested for the murder and sexual assault of a six-year-old girl may be a serial child killer, Indian police said yesterday after he confessed to 14 more crimes. Ravinder Kumar made the confession after his arrest in New Delhi on Thursday, said Vikramjeet Singh, the deputy commissioner of Delhi police.
Mr Singh said police questioned the 24-year-old labourer after they had discovered he had been detained in a separate assault case last year and released on bail.
“We arrested Ravinder Kumar over the assault and murder of a six- year- old girl,” he said.
“After we realised that he had previously been arrested in a similar case, we interrogated him and he told us of at least 14 other cases.”
A police officer said Mr Kumar had confessed to the “assault and murder of 14 or 15 children over the past few years”.
“We are in the process of ascertaining all his claims and separate teams are looking at every claim.”
The case has drawn comparisons with the gruesome 2006 discovery of the dismembered bodies of 19 people in sewage drains near a house in Noida, a commuter city of the Indian capital.
Many of the victims in that case – dubbed the “house of horrors” – were children abducted from the poor neighbourhood of Nithari near by.
Parents of the victims later said police had not taken them seriously because they were poor, even though they reported their children missing.
Police arrested Mr Kumar after finding his identity card at a construction site where they discovered the body of the sixyear-old victim, who had gone missing last week. Mr Kumar, hooded and flanked by two police officers, said he killed his victims after assaulting them while drunk.
“I lose control over my mind after consuming excessive alcohol and must have assaulted and killed around 14 or 15 children,” he said. “I killed them to avoid getting detected.”
Police have sent teams to the areas where Mr Kumar claimed to have committed the crimes, and have ordered a psychological profile. They said investigations would take time.
“We have the evidence to link him to his present arrest, but it could be a long investigation process for other claims as he has given a broad time frame of his acts and also doesn’t know the exact area where he committed those acts,” Mr Singh said.