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Bengal’s serial killer - Chain man - sentenced to death in rape and murder case

Hindustan Times, Kolkata | ByJoydeep Thakur| Edited by Sabir Hussain
Jul 06, 2020 07:52 PM IST

The alleged killer is facing trial in 14 other cases for rape, murder and attempted murder.

A 38-year-old serial killer, who had murdered at least nine women and raped two of the victims, was sentenced to death in a rape and murder case by a district court in south Bengal’s East Burdwan district on Monday, police said.

“The accused Kamruzzaman Sarkar was sentenced to death by the additional district and session’s judge court for raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl in May 2019. He was arrested on June 2, 2019,” said Bhaskar Mukherjee, superintendent of police of East Burdwan district.

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He has been charged in 15 cases in two districts – East Burdwan and Hooghly. There were two were rape and murder cases, seven murder cases and six attempt to murder cases. The victims were aged between 16 and 75 years.

In some cases he was charged with sections related to robbery as he had robbed the victims. All the crimes took place between 2013 and 2019 till he was arrested.

“The court observed that it was one of the rarest of the rare cases. I stressed on maximum punishment as the man had hit the minor helpless girl on her forehead and then tried to strangulate her and raped her. Nothing can be more heinous than this,” said Soumyajit Raha, special public prosecutor of the case.

The survivors told the police that the accused entered their houses posing an official of the electricity department to take meter readings. In most cases he would strangulate his victims with a metal chain. These common links had earned him the notorious tags of ‘chain man’ and ‘meter man’ in the two districts.

“He chose his prey carefully and usually struck in the afternoons, when the men of the houses were away at work. He would conduct a recce for two-three days to find out whether the woman he wanted to target was alone at home,” said Mukherjee

Originally hailing from Murshidabad district, Sarar used to stay with his wife, two sons and a daughter in East Burdwan. He used to deal with scrap metal, police said.

Interrogation had revealed that Sarkar’s downfall was brought on by his superstition. Police said his astrologer had told him that red was his lucky colour, so he had stuck to a red motorbike and red helmet even after some of his targets escaped alive.

“On June 1 last year, the police shared all clues that they could gather to civic volunteers who help cops in traffic management. The breakthrough came the next day,” said a police official.

Two civic volunteers Anirban Ghosh, 28, and Khokon Santra, 30, had flagged down a red motorcycle and was noting down the number when another man on another red motorbike tried to speed past the barricade, lost his balance, and fell. It was Sarkar.

Born in a lower middle-class family in Bengal’s Murshidabad district in 1982 as the fourth of nine siblings, Sarkar lost his mother at the age of 13. His father married soon after, and following a few months of trouble, Sarkar dropped out of the local madrasa and left home.

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