In a sensational investigation carried out by the Madhya Pradesh police, a serial killer has reportedly confessed to having killed 30 truck-drivers and cleaners on highways to loot goods transported by them and sell the truck.
Forty-eight-year-old Aaadesh Khambara, a resident of Mandideep—an industrial town on outskirts of Bhopal, used to run a tailoring shop before getting into the heinous crime and becoming the kingpin of a gang that killed more than 30 innocent people. Bhopal police said 22 of the 30 murder cases were unsolved.
Madhya Pradesh DGP R.K. Shukla said, "It’s a major achievement for the Bhopal police. The gang's connections have been found in neighbouring states. Primary investigation points that the gang has a pan-India network".
The gang led by Khambara started in 2007 when the tailor devised the strategy to first befriend truck-drivers and cleaners, and started accompanying them on their tours. With support from his team, he used to drug the truck staff and took the transport vehicle to distant states where the goods were sold at throwaway prices, and the staff murdered. The truckers' bodies were then abandoned in jungles and truck sold in a distant state. Bhopal South district SP Rahul Lodha said they mostly targeted Tata trucks that were easily sold.
In most of the cases, police could not recover the dead bodies or the truck, and the case remained unsolved. Since the truck-owners claimed the insurance amount, the cases were never followed. However, recently, the Bilkhiria police station of Bhopal recovered a dead body and the investigations zeroed upon one Jaikaran, one of the gang members. When police arrested Jaikaran, he broke and disclosed the modus operandi revealing the name of Khambara. Police also recovered 43 mobile phones that were used to run some 50 SIM cards used during the operations conducted by Khambara.
Jaikaran had met Khambara at a liquor shop of Mandideep where they hatched a plan to loot trucks carrying goods. Earlier, Jaikaran used to work for a criminal gang from Jhansi in 2010, SP of Bhopal South Rahul Lodha said.
So far, the police has arrested nine people in connection who used to work in the gang. Khambara confessed that his gang has killed five people in Chhattisgarh capital of Raipur, three truckers in Warda of Maharashtra, two in Amravati, two in Sambalpur of Odisha, 10 in various places of Madhya Pradesh near Bhopal, apart from a few more neighbouring states.
The alarming numbers of the crime had increased the ambit of investigation with the police sending teams to nearby states to dig out more evidences and cases of blind murder and missing trucks. Police said the gang members were in touch with gangs of other states who helped them to sell the booty.
