[indistinct chattering]
[new reporter] This is Chandrakant Jha, a serial killer.
Fear spread among people in the years 2006 and 2007
when headless bodies were found one after the other next to Tihar Jail.
The murderer was constantly threatening the police over phone calls.
And these calls turned out to be Chandrakant's biggest mistake
which led to his arrest.
THE CASE OF THROWING DEAD BODIES OUTSIDE TIHAR
SUSPECTED SERIAL KILLER ARRESTED SANJAY RAI, WEST DELHI
[suspenseful music]
[Akhilesh] Chandrakant was a smart boy.
He was sly since the very beginning.
As time passed, he began murdering people. He despised those who lied.
If he found out that someone is lying to him,
he would kill them.
[suspenseful music]
[Utkarsh] He did not look nervous.
He did not look like somebody who was shaken up
or somebody who was very disturbed.
Perhaps, if I would have met him on the road or something,
I wouldn't have been able to guess that…
that this man could be involved in something like that.
[ominous music]
A murder was committed, investigation was in process,
culprit got arrested and yet we did not have any proof.
[Sunder Singh] Calling someone a murderer doesn't make him one, right?
Everything needs to be proved to back this claim.
Chandrakant Jha was such an experienced criminal that he knew
that the information provided to the police
would not be admissible in court.
Now, let me tell you the story that he narrated to me.
[theme music]
[ominous music]
I was shocked during the interrogation.
When I asked him his name, he turns around
and asked me, "Are you Inspector Sunder Singh?"
I asked him, "How do you know me?"
He said to me, "We spoke on the phone and you called me
a wicked person, and I challenged you, 'Catch me if you can.'"
"Sir, I admit that I lost to you.
Please do not beat me. If you do,
I won't give you any information, but if you spare me,
I'll provide the details willingly."
[Sunder Singh] I told him to speak up and that we wouldn't beat him.
Now, let's begin with the story and all the details provided by him.
[C.C.] My name is Chandrakant Jha.
I hail from a village named Ghosai
which is located in Madhepura, in Bihar.
[pensive music]
My mother was a teacher and my father worked in the irrigation department.
[Devnarayan] He had moved in here with us.
This was not the place where Chandrakant was born.
My name is Devnarayan Paswan.
I've known Chandrakant for quite some time now…
[murmurs]
…since we were around five to six years old.
We were friends since childhood. I've known him since he moved here.
[Devnarayan] We spent our early years together.
GHOSAI RESIDENT
[ambient music]
[Akhilesh] His, uh, mother's name was Champadevi.
Champadevi had six sons.
The eldest son was Nityanand, then came Indranand,
Chandranand, Kalanand, Sadanand,
and the last one was Deepak Kumar.
My name is Akhilesh Sharma.
[indistinct chatter]
[Akhilesh] I was Nityanand's friend.
We studied in the same school.
We grew up together and so, we were really close.
All the brothers were tall and…
had a well-built structure.
They were all nice and fit.
[C.C.] All of them were extremely selfish.
My parents were never interested in my studies and well-being,
so I developed a sense of hatred towards them.
Which is why I decided to leave the village,
and finally move to Delhi.
[horns honking]
Out of 50 percent of the homes in Bihar,
there is at least one member in each family who's a migrant.
[Alakh] When someone decides to migrate
to a new place, from Bihar or anywhere else…
But right now, let's talk about Bihar.
They migrate through someone's reference.
They always have someone they know at the place they have moved to.
When they return to the village, they contact the person
who offered them to migrate.
And once they are here, they stay with the people
who have already migrated here from their village.
And that's why you see that people from the same village and district
generally move into the same area,
and they even work in the…
same field as the others.
[suspenseful music]
[C.C.] In Delhi, I saw some familiar faces
from my area working in Azadpur Mandi.
I began to work there as a laborer and vegetable seller.
The judge called me up and appointed me as the amicus curiae for this case.
He asked me to meet Chandrakant and get a brief from him.
I was given the responsibility of defending Chandrakant.
Chandrakant was a family man with a wife and five children,
and actually he had committed a murder and disposed of the body parts,
and even his family members didn't know about this.
[Deepak] He earned a livelihood as a laborer.
He took up different odd jobs to make ends meet.
First, as a vegetable seller.
He faced some problems while he was doing that.
The police posed problems for him. He alleged that they demanded money.
He said that since he began selling vegetables in the market,
the police would harass him all the time
and never let him sell vegetables peacefully.
[Deepak] It would be difficult for a poor person to feed his family
if he did not earn a livelihood for that day.
The police begins demanding more money from a person
who is settled and whose business is doing well.
The Bihari migrants can be considered as the lowest category of people.
The people of Bihar were not equipped with local skills.
[Alakh] So, they worked as rickshaw pullers
or laborers for loading and unloading goods,
because these jobs didn't require any expertise.
Hence, the attitude of the police towards such people was terrible.
[screeching]
As per the file,
Chandrakant had mentioned that the police had demanded
a motorcycle from him as a Diwali gift.
And that made him despise the police
and, uh, bear grudges against the system.
[ominous music]
[indistinct background chatter]
[Sunder Singh] Chandrakant Jha used to work in Azadpur Mandi.
The people who worked there had formed an association of their own,
which was led by a man named Pandit.
[ominous music]
Chandrakant said that Pandit
used to take some money from their wages every month
and told them that it was the share that had to be given
to the police, the MCD, and other contractors.
He'd even say that he spent that money on himself.
Chandrakant felt that this was incorrect,
and refused to pay the money.
This enraged Pandit and the two of them got into a scuffle.
[murmuring]
[Sunder Singh] The knife that Chandrakant used for chopping vegetables
cut Pandit's arm accidentally.
So he said that Pandit filed a police complaint against him
and that the police had filed a false case against him.
[ominous music]
Chandrakant said that his, uh, wife had also been arrested along with him
even though she had nothing to do with it.
[lock clangs]
[ominous music]
[Sunder Singh] Chandrakant told me that he had decided that no matter what,
he would definitely kill Pandit as an act of revenge.
[suspenseful music]
So, Pandit was the same victim named Mangal,
who was murdered in the year 1998.
[C.C.] I have five children.
My wife and my children are all illiterate.
I live with my family in Alipur.
Chandrakant Jha owned a house in Alipur,
where his wife and his five kids resided permanently.
[ominous music]
[Sunder Singh] And he lived in Haiderpur,
which is where he went on a murdering spree.
He began to tell us about his pattern of killing
when we asked him a few questions, as part of our interrogation.
[ominous music]
[Sunder Singh] Chandrakant told us that he first started bonding with the victims,
treated them as family.
And, then, he started getting into the details.
The first case that was filed in 2006, on the 20th of October,
was the murder case of Anil Mandal.
[indistinct TV chatter]
[C.C.] He used to spend my money.
Then one day, he took my daughter along with him,
even though I clearly asked him not to.
I got extremely furious at him.
[tense music]
[grunting]
[Hargobinder Singh] He tied his hands and legs,
told him that he was going to discipline him, and then slapped him.
But, uh, it turned out to be much more than that.
[grunts]
[groaning]
[thuds]
[clangs]
[eerie music]
[clangs]
[liquid dripping]
[indistinct TV chatter]
[ominous music]
[Sunder Singh] He told us that the following morning,
he placed the dead body in a basket,
put it on the cart, and wrapped it up in paper and cloth.
Later, he took the basket with the dead body in it
and went to Outer Ring Road in Haiderpur.
[motor engine whirring]
[bell rings]
There, he got on a DTC bus on Outer Ring Road.
The buses from Outer Ring Road go up to Tilak Nagar.
When he reached the flyover, he got out of the bus
and got into an autorickshaw.
[suspenseful music]
He looked around if Constable Balbir was there
so that he could drop off the dead body.
Then he put the dead body at gate number three of Tihar Jail
and then, he left from there.
TIHAR JAIL GATE NUMBER 3
Then, he went to Nangal Raya and made a call from a pay phone booth.
[keys clacking]
[inaudible]
He told us that he punished people based on their actions, and for their own good.
[Sunder Singh] He claimed to do all this
for the good of those people.
He threw the victims' heads into Yamuna River
for their own welfare, apparently.
[suspenseful music]
[Sunder Singh] The second murder took place on 25th April, 2007.
The victim's name was Upender.
[Hargobinder Singh] This guy was dismissed from the place where he was working.
So, he had a problem. Now, Chandrakant helps him.
He helps him by letting him stay with him, he shared his food with him.
But he said that his habits were not good.
He even had a fight with Chandrakant over a call.
[C.C.] His behavior was not good at all.
I decided to take Upender to my room in Haiderpur.
Chandrakant said, he used to give the victims two chances.
Either get reformed or you will be removed from the file.
These were the exact words he used,
"If I told you, you'd be removed from the file, it meant, I will kill you."
[muffled screaming]
[tense music]
[C.C.] I cut off his hands, legs, and genitals with a big knife.
[knife clangs]
[ominous music]
[engine starts]
[suspenseful music]
I dumped one of his legs outside the Shalimar Bagh temple,
and then the other leg in Swaroop Nagar.
I threw one of his hands outside Tis Hazari Court…
and then chucked his head in the Yamuna River.
[water splashes]
[Hargobinder Singh] He disposed of the victim's torso
outside Tihar Jail's gate number three.
[ominous music]
GATE NUMBER 3
Chandrakant said that after he killed Upender,
he came back again to that particular murder spot.
[rope snaps]
[tense music]
Chandrakant told me that,
"Sir, I would never fail to recognize your voice,
but you failed to recognize mine."
I then asked him, "Why were you disposing of the dead bodies outside Tihar Jail?"
Chandrakant replied that there was a head constable named Balbir,
who was posted at gate number three before 2003.
[Sunder Singh] Apparently, Balbir had tortured him
when he was arrested back then.
He also cut off a part of his meal
and stripped him naked in front of the other prisoners.
That's the reason why Chandrakant wanted to torture him
and make him suffer. So, before he dropped off the body,
he would ensure that Head Constable Balbir would be on duty.
[ominous music]
Chandrakant held a lot of grudges against the police.
Since he had grudges against the police, he not only wanted to prove
that the police are liars, but also,
uh, wanted to prove his prowess. He wanted to prove that a criminal
does his job perfectly. And that the police are wrong
and can't work sincerely.
He wanted to prove that he was better than the police.
Moreover, he wanted to show the police in bad light,
as they could not catch him. And that, even though he left dead bodies
in broad daylight, the police had no clue.
[Hargobinder Singh] And the last one was a boy named Dalip.
[ominous music]
He was staying with Chandrakant for 15 to 16 days.
Chandrakant said that this boy
shattered his faith completely in those 15-16 days because of his lies.
And all of this resulted in Chandrakant inviting him to his place.
[ominous music]
[Sunder Singh] The third murder was of a man named Dalip.
Chandrakant threw his torso outside Tihar Jail.
Both his hands and genitals were cut off
and thrown near the gate of Tis Hazari Court.
Both his legs were dumped in Kishan Ganj Nala.
And, lastly, he threw his head in Ghaziabad.
He says that he had draped a small skirt
that belonged to his own daughter
and wrapped a red cloth over it.
He kept it in a polythene bag, threw it
and let it flow towards the South of Yamuna River near ISBT.
[water splashes]
See, the way he had handled the body parts, in terms of throwing them,
or the way he claimed that he has killed that person in the past,
and then the next sentence reads
that he's going to repeat these things in the future.
Maybe, the experience of killing the past victims
must have evoked those sensorimotor imageries in his mind.
[Dr. SL Vaya] This is really very disturbing.
This gets converted as a rage and makes him say that,
"You are responsible for all these things that I've done."
"It is because of you that I have done this."
[ominous music]
Now, how does he address the bad feeling?
Because he also knows that you're a very competent authority.
If I tell you that, "You have treated me like a second-grade citizen,"
you think, "You deserve it."
That's what you would tell me.
Though I know I deserve it, I still hope and expect you to treat me with humanity.
If you have not done so, my anger there is justified.
But I also can't be continuing without doing it,
and that's the reason I'll be doing it in the future as well.
[C.C.] I will be sending the next gift on time.
Your jijaji and damad, C.C.
During the interrogation, I questioned him about his, uh,
um, uh, sign, "C.C." in the letter.
YOUR BROTHER-IN-LAW AND SON-IN-LAW, C.C.
[Sunder Singh] He said, "I consider myself as Chandra, meaning the moon.
So, C.C. is the short form to say Chandra twice."
His main purpose in addressing us was to develop his own identity,
to challenge us, to see if the law authorities would recognize
his competence and skill in doing what he was doing,
with such efficiency.
Everything failed.
So that is the time he felt, "I must prove myself now."
[C.C.] I have left the dead body
right in front of gate number three of Tihar Jail.
All these small clues are an indirect way of saying that,
"I have failed to control myself.
Now, you are supposed to be the competent authority from the lot,
who can help me in controlling myself.
So, please control me."
[C.C.] Your father and jijaji, C.C.
He also comes from a very deprived emotional environment,
deprived social environment,
and, uh, he has also got very little
cohesion in his family relationship with his parents.
[children chattering]
[Akhilesh] His mother was a teacher.
She too was pretty notorious in her own right.
She had the urge to start fights.
Even if you tried to help her,
she wouldn't spare you at all.
When the time came, she would file a court case against you.
[Akhilesh] This was how she really was.
She was always up to something.
She would threaten people and get into fights.
She was always making plans.
The kids fended for themselves.
She never bothered about them.
[Akhilesh] The children were on their own.
They had to arrange for their food. They even starved sometimes.
[pensive music]
Then Chandrakant moved to…
Delhi.
So that he could earn a living there.
[ominous music]
[Akhilesh] Chandrakant started with his notorious ways there as well.
He even killed a criminal in Delhi.
That man was a gangster of that area.
It was his turf, and…
he was the leader, the main man there.
[Akhilesh] Chandrakant had a fight with him.
[tense music]
There was a wood stove, bhati,
which was used by a street vendor for cooking.
The gangster began to kick it.
Chandrakant asked him, "Why are you doing this?"
[Akhilesh] The gangster had a criminal mind, so he couldn't think straight
and stabbed Chandrakant with a knife.
His chest from here to here, was ripped open.
[ominous music]
[scrunching]
[Devnarayan] I asked him, "Partner, how did you survive?"
He said that his innards were actually falling out.
He, then, picked them up with his bare hands
and used his scarf to stop the bleeding.
And he wrapped himself up and then went to the doctor.
The doctor treated the wound, he set the innards
and operated on him.
[ominous music]
After he recovered, he decided to learn karate.
[Akhilesh] Judo, karate. So he got trained in it.
[nunchaku creaking]
He hunted down those three people and killed them.
And from here on, he started torturing people and committing murders.
[Akhilesh] Before that, his only motive was to work and earn a living.
He used to stay in Delhi.
He worked as a, what do you call, daily wage laborer.
[Akhilesh] The place where he worked was almost about four kilometers long.
And the entire place was lined up with trucks loaded with goods.
[suspenseful music]
He always stopped in front of the truck
carrying the most expensive vegetables.
The rest of the people working there
would be busy offloading goods and moving them to the warehouse.
[Akhilesh] Chandrakant, on the other hand,
would steal the sacks loaded with vegetables.
[suspenseful music continues]
Chandrakant always had someone helping him out.
He would pass those stolen sacks to his associate.
[tense music]
[Akhilesh] Then later in the night, he would sell it off.
His associate was responsible for selling the vegetables at night.
Once the vegetables were sold, he would take away all the money.
[Akhilesh] He would always buy food for his associates,
but didn't ever give them any money.
[Hargobinder Singh] So, obviously, we wanted to know his motive.
Because, uh, all these victims
were either from his native place,
or had met him during the course of the journey of his stay in Delhi,
or they had met him in Tihar Jail,
or even probably, uh, during his judicial days
when he was produced in court.
Some of them were really needy, some were totally destitute,
in the sense that they didn't even have meals to eat.
So, he would invite them over, he would befriend them.
[searing]
[Hargobinder Singh] The unique part is that it never started
with the motive of murdering these people.
It was essentially during his, uh,
acquaintance with them, association with them
that he would take offense to certain mannerisms of these…
you know, these victims.
[suspenseful music]
And that, of course, would blow up into some other, uh,
small mistakes that the victim makes, which degenerates,
and where he has a very strong opinion against these people.
[Hargobinder Singh] Where he starts feeling that this person
is just a dead load on the planet or something like that,
he reaches that stage.
So, uh, it is very extreme.
[ominous music]
The way he transported the bodies is quite remarkable.
Transporting bodies 15 kilometers away on the roads of Delhi, is not an easy job.
[Hargobinder Singh] Even though it was early morning hours,
there is no set pattern, as to any season, or any particular month.
But still, it was risky as he could be stopped and checked.
[indistinct chattering]
[camera shutter clicking]
Chandrakant threw the bodies outside Tihar
because he wanted to make this case sensational.
[Amit Kumar] The Joint Commissioner had organized
a press conference for this case.
In the press conference, the police claimed to have solved the cases
of, uh, the dead bodies that were found
right outside Tihar Jail.
The same killer had also committed a murder in 1998.
But he was acquitted of that charge.
[Amit Kumar] This was the biggest lead for the police at that time
as it led them to Chandrakant.
[ominous music]
[Sunder Singh] We found three dead bodies,
out of which the first victim was Anil Mandal,
who was murdered on 20th October, 2006.
The second victim was Upender, who was murdered on 25th April, 2007.
And the third victim was Dalip, who was murdered on 18th May, 2007.
And in addition to all this,
Chandrakant also confessed that in 1998,
he had murdered a man named Pandit alias Mangal.
In 2003, he had murdered a man named Shekar.
And in the same year, he had murdered another man named Umesh.
And later, in 2005, he had murdered a man named Guddu.
When we cross-checked the period, the date, the time, and the place,
we found that he was instrumental in all these crimes as well.
The 2003 case was solved.
But the other two cases,
at Mukhmelpur Nala, and the other one at Mangolpuri Public Toilet,
we found them existing but they were untraced.
They could not be identified and no investigation had taken place,
but he confessed about them later.
We had merely arrested him, and he had already started confessing everything.
But just his words do not prove that he is the one behind the murders.
Proper proof is also required, right?
[ominous music]
[Varun] Statements that are given before the police are not admissible
unless those statements lead to the discovery of a particular object.
Then it becomes admissible. Only that part becomes admissible.
This is the law of evidence, of uh, you know, disclosures.
That's something which is not in the knowledge
of the investigating officer,
which comes to the knowledge of the investigating officer
after some disclosure.
And actually, this information was privy to the accused only.
Only he could have known.
[ominous music]
Now, the thing was that the murders had taken place,
the investigation was in process, and the murderer had, uh, been arrested,
but we did not have any evidence against him.
Until there is an evidence, no action can be taken against the accused.
Uh, he could change his statement at any time.
He could say, "The police beat me up to get the information."
The court will believe us only if we present conclusive evidence.
Now, the main thing is that all the parts of the dead bodies were recovered,
but three heads were still missing.
[Sunder Singh] He mentioned that he had thrown the victims' heads
in the Yamuna River.
Now, we had to find them at any cost.
So, we made arrangements to find them.
We hired boats and divers to get the work done.
A lot of effort was put into find those missing heads.
[tense music]
Chandrakant took us to a place from where
he had thrown the heads into the river.
So, then we tossed a stone of the same dimension and weight into the river
to check how far the heads could have gone,
and how deep they could've gone.
[Sunder Singh] And then, we started sailing from that particular point.
[birds chirping]
[crickets chirping]
I can say one thing for sure.
During the course of the interrogation,
I realized that he was extremely crafty.
He gave us every single detail of what he had done.
[Sunder Singh] Now, with that information, we had to find evidence,
but he also intended on misleading me with it.
[ominous music]
We searched that entire area continuously for two to three days.
We scoured every inch of the place,
but failed to find any evidence.
[murmuring]
[Sunder Singh] That place was unhygienic and surrounded by flies and mosquitoes.
There was a terrible stench.
The water level had dropped, too.
Later, we saw two dogs swimming in the river.
[Sunder Singh] And we saw them getting out of the water on the other end.
That made me wonder,
what if the dogs had dragged the heads out of the water
and thrown them at some distant place?
[suspenseful music]
We began investigating the area around the river
and started searching the bushes there.
Snakes were coming out of the bushes, but we still couldn't find the heads.
And all of a sudden, the boys shouted that they had finally found something.
We all went to the place where the evidence was found
and saw that the things he described in his statement were all there.
[suspenseful music]
[Sunder Singh] But I still had a gut feeling
that he was cheating and misleading us.
Chandrakant claimed that the head that was found
was of Dalip's, who he had murdered on 18th May.
[Sunder Singh] I was still confused
because the skull was completely dried out.
The skull had no traces of flesh, blood, or hair.
There was nothing at all.
It couldn't have been Dalip's skull because he was murdered on 18th May,
uh, which was very recent.
Had the dogs scavenged on the skulls,
some amount of blood or flesh ought to have been there.
But this skull was dry as a bone.
When we were not able to find the heads of the other victims,
I came up with a suggestion.
And I said, "We will give a request,
that all these, uh, limbs, dead bodies, and this skull
should be sent to the lab for DNA tests."
[ominous music]
[Sunder Singh] We now decided to carry out
a joint investigation on all the three cases.
So, we sent the bodies for the DNA test to FSL.
DNA matching sounds pretty, uh, cool, but, uh…
uh, if you get an unclaimed body,
you will definitely know the DNA of that person.
Let's assume you find a body, you will maintain its DNA for the future.
But it's not like you have a national database of DNAs
where you can just match it and find out the identity of the person.
But it was only after Chandrakant Jha was eventually caught
and when he was interrogated
that we could tally everything with the information he had given us.
[ominous music]
[Sunder Singh] There is one more technique where we force the accused
to prove what he is confessing, to know if he's saying the truth or not.
So we used that technique, too.
After that,
Chandrakant started confessing to every single crime with proof.
But I knew that although he was confessing it in front of us,
he may not confess it in court.
Even in the past, he was acquitted of charges
because there was no proof.
Anyway, he led us, and took our entire team to Haiderpur Colony.
[Sunder Singh] The house where he took us, had approximately 20 to 30 rooms.
And no one was living there at the moment.
Some laborers might have been staying there,
but at that time, they had gone to the factory to work.
PROSPERITY HAPPY DIWALI
RAM SITA
[camera shutter clicks]
When we went inside, there was, uh…
a very weird smell emitting from that place.
The smell was really bad. The place was really messy and smelly.
And we found three knives there.
WEAPON KNIFE
When we picked up those knives,
we noticed some spots of blood there.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Sunder Singh] We shot videos and clicked photos of that area.
The FSL confiscated the knives and sealed them for further investigation.
And samples of the blood from the floor were then taken for testing.
[ominous music]
The FSL had to scrape the floor
to retrieve the blood samples for further investigation.
Later, he said that he had kept a mobile phone in a cupboard,
so we confiscated it and sealed the mobile phone.
And after that, we saw some names of people written on a wall.
[ominous music]
[Sunder Singh] We asked him, "What is all this?"
He replied saying that these were the contact numbers
of some of his acquaintances.
The mobile phone that we found was his personal number
and that was the same mobile phone that we were tracking all this time.
[music intensifies]
Now we had gathered a lot of valuable and important evidence
to arrest him legally.
Uh, before filing an FIR against him,
we have to look for the contents for the FIR.
We cannot just arrest someone…
[coughs] …for fun.
We need to have solid grounds for arresting a person.
And now, after the interrogation, we had enough reasons to arrest him,
as we also had evidence values that the mobile phone belonged to him.
[Sunder Singh] Another proof was the three knives
and the blood samples found at that site.
The things that we had found were similar to the things that he had told us about.
In other words, we now had enough reasons to arrest him.
[indistinct background chatter]
[reporter 1] Keep the camera rolling. Just move behind.
Come on, come on. Move behind. Hey, mic!
-Mic, mic! Where's the mic? -What? One second.
I want to ask the media, why do you all report false news items?
[reporter 1] No, no. Answer our question.
-No, no! You first answer my questions! -[reporter 1] Tell us the truth!
-But I have always been telling the truth. -[reporter 2] What's the truth?
First, you people answer my question
that why do you all report false news items?
-And then I'll answer your questions. -If you think that it's false news,
it's because you have not spoken the truth yet!
Why? Did you ask me before publishing it?
Where I have been arrested from, you would know and I would know the truth!
-[reporter 1] Listen to me. -Apply some logic.
-[reporter 2] No, no. -No, you first answer me.
Where I was arrested from, would you know what I know?
[reporter 1] No, tell us. Why did you murder those four people?
How do you know that I killed only four people?
I could've killed more than four people.
[reporter 1] All right, then, give us all the details.
I'll speak directly in the court, not with you.
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