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New Delhi: In northern Kerala, about 34 km from Kozhikode, one of the most religious members of the Lourd Matha Catholic Church, Jolly Joseph, was arrested Saturday for the murder of her first husband and his entire family — including his parents and three members of his extended family. She had been spiking their food with cyanide for over 14 years.

The local police say she committed the murders to gain control of property and to live with her partner of choice.

Her second husband Shaju Zacharias, whom she married in 2017, is also her former husband’s cousin. Shaju’s one-year-old daughter Alphin and wife Sili have also died; Jolly is a suspect in their deaths as well. Shaju and his family have since distanced themselves from her.

It sounds like a movie plot, but this isn’t the first time a serial killer has caught the attention of the nation.

Cyanide Mohan

Professor Mohan Kumar, known as Cyanide Mohan, killed 20 women between 2003 and 2009 in southern Karnataka. All these women were found in restrooms of bus stands, dressed in wedding attire but with no jewellery. In all the cases, the restroom had to be broken into as it was locked from the inside.

Mohan’s modus operandi was to lure all these women with the promise to marry them, have sex with them and then the following day, take them to the bus stand where he would convince them to take a birth control pill, which he had laced with cyanide. He would send them to the bathroom telling them they might get unwell after having the pill and there, when they collapsed, he would return to the hotel room and disappear with their jewellery and other belongings that he had instructed the women to leave behind.

On 31 January, the additional district and sessions sentenced Mohan to life imprisonment till death without any remission.

“It was the first case which I came across in my career that cyanide was used for homicide. The case created quite the sensation, most of all for the fact that the killer murdered women after promising to marry them. It was a completely different modus operandi,” said former DG of Karnataka, S.T. Ramesh.

Surinder Koli and Moninder Singh Pandher

The Nithari killings, which took place in a village in Noida between 2005 and 2006, shocked the entire country. The killings took place at businessman Moninder Pandher’s house, where it was his domestic help Surinder Koli who would allegedly lure mostly underage girls into the house. It was only in late 2006 that the killings began coming to light after skeletal remains were found in the drain near the house.

When the CBI took over the case in 2007, more skulls were recovered. Koli and Pandher were accused of murdering and raping more than 15 children. The CBI gave a clean chit to Pandher the same year, but indicted Koli as a cannibal. The CBI court stated, “He (Koli) called in the poor girl and tried to rape her. But he killed her when he failed. He later cut her body part and ate it after cooking… He later cut the body into pieces and disposed them off.”

There were rumours of organ trade, but this was never confirmed. Koli has been sentenced to death in 10 of the cases, while Pandher was finally convicted in 2017 by a CBI court in the rape and murder of Pinky. He has been sentenced to death.

Justice Gyan Sudha Misra, who was part of the Supreme Court bench with Justice Katju, which upheld the death sentence against Koli in one of the cases, says, “I gave my seal of approval but vividly remember that I wanted a longer hearing but none of the advocates were prepared to argue. And even Justice Katju was not in favour of doing so. I wanted to consider giving him life imprisonment instead of death sentence as it was clear he did all of this under the influence of Pandher, however not to the extent of giving a dissenting judgment.”

Raman Raghav

With two films and a documentary made on him, many have heard of serial killer Raman Raghav. He roamed the suburbs of Mumbai in the 1960s, killing people. It has been reported that he killed more than 41 people between 1965-68. He picked most of his victims randomly, the majority of them being slum-dwellers. Raghav reportedly suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia. His murder weapon was a steel rod with which he hit his victims on the head. It has been reported that he also killed his sister after stabbing her several times and raping her.

After the police nabbed him, Raghav did not relent while in police custody despite their harsh interrogation and threats of torture. It was finally when he was given chicken curry which he was craving for a very long time that he confessed about the details of his weapon, his modus operandi and the actual number of his victims.

Cyanide Mallika

K.D. Kempamma or Cyanide Mallika as she is remembered, was India’s first female serial killer, who killed her first victim in 1999. She would hang around the temples in Bengaluru, seeking out vulnerable women going through hardships. Many of these women were seeking divine help as they were either childless or had marital issues. She would claim to be skilled in a puja that would help these women. After gaining their trust, she would ask them to come to a desolate spot near the temple dressed in expensive jewellery. There, as a part of the puja, she would make them either drink water or eat food laced with cyanide. She would then take their jewellery and run. Like Cyanide Mohan, she too was at a bus stand in possession of a victim’s jewellery when she was arrested in 2008.

In her book Trials of Truth: India’s Landmark Criminal Cases, senior advocate Pinky Anand wrote, “This case was in direct contrast to our traditional thinking that women resort to gruesome crimes only when forced to, or under extreme circumstances that deeply affected the psyche. This case seems to defy the traditional gender roles and the way we perceive them. The idea that women can kill seems to be a difficult one to digest for our conscience, but a mere look at such instances proves the opposite.”

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