Man arrested for 7 murders, cannibalism

TribuneIndia.com

November 30 2005

Thirty-four years of hiding from the police, seven ruthless murders, including the cannibal act of devouring the head of his former servant, are enlisted as the ‘notorious achievements’ in the criminal record of a 55-year-old chronic opium smuggler, who after eluding the law all these years has finally landed in police custody.

With his arrest, files of seven murders that were gathering dust have been brought out by the police department. Many more such cases in Punjab or Uttar Pradesh, where the man lived for several years under assumed identities, are likely to be unearthed.

Despite the temptation of terming him Punjab’s latest serial killer, the police refrained from using the term as the accused had a proper motive in killing four of his seven victims. Others were just done to death in a fit of rage or to satisfy himself.

The man, Major Singh alias, Jagga alias Jagan Nath, is probably one of the first criminals in Punjab who had the dubious distinction of being a cannibal too. During the 34 years of eluding the police, he seemed to have just one solution for people who troubled him- murder them and that too in a gory manner.

SP (detective) Gurpreet Singh said the man was so ‘cool’ in taking a life that he even murdered a Punjab Police Constable, who had somehow managed to find the accused’s changed identity and address to serve summons from different courts where he was facing charges of smuggling opium.

The police officer said as per the investigations conducted so far, the accused, Major Singh, was an opium smuggler. He was arrested a number of times for supplying opium. In 1971 when the man was out on bail, he killed a fellow narcotic smuggler, Mukhtiar Singh, due to a dispute over sharing the spoils when both were in Uttar Pradesh to buy the drug.

Mukhtiar Singh’s body has not been traced till date. Interestingly, his name figures in the list of proclaimed narcotic smugglers. It is only now that the truth has come out.

Major Singh kept on changing addresses and identities. A Punjab Police Constable, Bihari Lal somehow managed to find him every time. In 1981, the accused along with a woman, Harbans Kaur and an accomplice Dayal Singh, tricked him into eating a poison-laced food.

They then threw his body on a railway track. The be-headed body was recovered by the police, which first took it to be a case of accident. But then registered a case of murder after the chemical examination revealed that the man had been poisoned. The Malerkotla police had then nabbed Harbans Kaur and Dayal Singh. Major Singh, however, remained untraceable.

Mr Gurpreet Singh further claimed that Major Singh then fled to Bareilly in Uttar Pradash and opened a dhaba on the outskirts of the city. He was, however, on the receiving end as Raju, a servant in his dhaba, killed his teenaged son after some minor problem.

He got so enraged that he beheaded Raju, cooked his head and devoured it. Mr Gurpreet Singh said after fleeing from that city he changed his identity and became a truck driver. There was, however, no change in his temparament as he mowed down two persons riding a bicycle under his truck as they made some gesture at him.

The accused has also confessed killing a person whom he had met in a dhaba in the city and both had an argument over something.