A serial killer who fed dead bodies to crocs, ran illegal kidney transplant racket

new delhi: The Delhi Police on Wednesday said that they had arrested a notorious serial killer, infamous for murdering as many as 50 people in the early 2000s, running an extensive illegal kidney transplant operation and running various cheating schemes throughout his criminal careers.

Identified as Deveder Sharma (62), the accused, an ayurvedic doctor, had jumped parole in January this year, after serving 16 years in jail. He had first gone to his native village and then moved to Delhi's Baprola area where he married a widow and started living with her. Police said they arrested Sharam from Baprola.

Significantly, of the over 50 murders that Sharma seems to have confessed to, he has been convicted in only around six to seven with police claiming that media reports from the time period combined with his modus operandi could link him to around 100 murders.

The Delhi Police has said that he used to target inter-state taxi drivers who ferried passengers from Rajasthan to Uttar Pradesh and find a secluded spot to kill them. They added that the Hazara Canal in UP's Kasganj was his go-to spot to dump the bodies, given the Canal's active crocodile population.

Police further added that he used to sell the stolen taxis to gullible persons at Kasganj and or got it dismantled at Meerut, which allowed him to make a quick buck. "He was arrested for several murder cases reported in the year 2002-2004 and in six to seven cases only he was convicted," DCP (Crime) said.

While Sharma was earlier married in 1982, his wife and children had deserted him in 2004 after his involvement in the heinous crimes came to light. The Bachelor in Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery from Bihar, however, started with a quaint ayurvedic clinic by the name of Janta Hospital and Diagnostic in Jaipur, which he ran for 11 years before turning into a career criminal.

He started with fake gas agency schemes in 1995 run from Aligarh, after losing Rs 11 lakh in a Delhi-based petroleum Ponzi scheme the previous year. Soon, he got involved with known robbers, with whom they used to steal LPG cylinders from supply trucks after killing the truck drivers. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Rakesh Paweriya said the truck used to be unloaded at the fake gas agency of Sharma and his accomplices used to get the stolen truck dismantled in Meerut.

Sharma was soon arrested in this scam and later in 2001, started another fake gas agency. However, the ayurvedic practitioner, in the meantime, had already started getting involved in illegal kidney transplant rackets. Police said he was involved in criminal cases registered in Jaipur, Ballabhgarh and Gurgaon with respect to illegal kidney transplant cases. In fact, Sharma was also found to be involved in the infamous Anmol Nursing Home kidney transplant racket of Gurgaon, unearthed in 2004.

He purportedly disclosed that between 1994 and 2004, he had conducted over 125 illegal kidney transplant operations, for each of which he made around Rs 5 lakh to Rs 7 lakh.

After he moved to Baprola in March, Sharma claimed to have joined a property sale business and said that he was currently involved in the sale of a Connaught Place property. But police have said this is likely to be a cover for another one of his cheating schemes. A team of Crime Branch officers under Inspector Ram Manohar Mishra arrested him from Outer Delhi.