Serial killer accused of six murders arrested in Burdwan

Kolkata: An alleged serial killer, who is accused of killing six women in Burdwan by strangulating them to death using an iron chain, was arrested after he was nabbed by civic volunteers on Sunday afternoon.

The accused identified as Kamruzzaman Sarkar, a resident of Murshidabad lived at Samudragarh in Burdwan for the past 15 years. He has a wife, two sons and a daughter.

A source said he confessed to crime. Though the police did not confirm but it was alleged the women he killed were also sexually abused.

A source informed that after murdering these women he had sexual intercourse with them and he inserted an iron rod into their vaginas rupturing their private parts.

According to police sources, in the past six months, in several areas of Burdwan, women were getting attacked by an unknown person.

In every case, the victim lived alone or she was alone at the time of attack. After several women died, pressure on the police kept on mounting as they couldn't find a single clue to trace the killer. The killer attacked these women from behind and strangled them using an iron chain. The pattern of killing came to light after an elderly woman identified as Sadhana Chatterjee was murdered at Dhatrigram in Kalna. Cops found an iron chain, which was used to kill Chatterjee. But no other evidence was found at that time. The panic over the serial killer kept on growing as several women were being attacked every month.

According to the police, 12 women were attacked out of them only six survived. The victims said that a well-dressed middle-aged man approached them posing as some official. Once, he approached a woman to check the electricity meter of her home and in another case, he said he was conducting some survey.

The case got further complicated after the accused, due to due to fear of arrest, started hitting the victim's head using an iron to ensure that she died. Earlier, he killed women by strangulation but later he started hitting on the women's head using an iron rod after strangling them to death.

Senior police officials said portrait parleys were made by every victim who survived. After getting an idea of the physical appearance of the accused, cops managed to get hold of a CCTV camera footage where he was spotted riding a red bike wearing a red helmet. From the footage cops concluded that in each case, the accused did a recce before attacking the victims.

Sarkar's picture where he was riding the bike and his portrait parley were shown to the civic volunteers and village police personnel. On Sunday afternoon, a few civic volunteers were on naka-checking duty at Kakuria village under jurisdiction of Bulbulitala outpost in Kalna.

They intercepted a red coloured bike and found all the documents of the biker were in place so he was allowed go. Suddenly, another red coloured bike was seen coming towards the naka checking point. Anirban Ghosh, one of the civic volunteers, asked the biker to stop his vehicle.

Seeing the police, the biker tried to escape but fell down after losing balance. Sarkar was identified when civic volunteers forced him to take his helmet off. Kalna police station and senior police officials were immediately informed.

"So far we came to know that 12 women were attacked, out of them only six survived. We are trying to find out if he murdered more people. He was produced before the Burdwan Court and has been remanded to 12 days police custody," said Bhaskar Mukherjee, Superintendent of Police, East Burdwan.