The year was 1998, when Chanderkant Jha, a 31-year-old man from the Indian state of Bihar, was arrested for killing a man in Delhi. He was in jail till 2002 and was later released due to lack of evidence. Soon after the release, he started a chilling series of murders in Delhi.
By the year 2002, Chanderkant Jha had killed and dismembered 18 people in West Delhi. His victims included Shekar and Umesh in 2003, Guddu in 2005, Amit in 2006, and Upender and Dalip in 2007. The majority of his victims were labourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Jha used to befriend them and help them get small jobs first, and then made them his targets.
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Later, on small disputes like lying or for being non-vegetarian, Jha used to start fighting with them and murder them by strangulating them. The case sent shivers down the spines of people in Delhi.
In February 2013, he was sentenced to death. In January 2016, the conviction was changed to life imprisonment.
He was released on 90-day parole and was supposed to return to jail in October 2023, but he had other plans: he disappeared.
Afterover a year-long search, the Delhi Police nabbed him on Friday (Jan 17).
"Chanderkant Jha carried a reward of ₹50,000. He has been traced... After several months of surveillance and planning, he was arrested from Delhi railway station," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Sanjay Sen said.
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The police team arrested him after an intense search of vegetable mandis (markets) across Delhi-NCR, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, where Jha had once worked, along with interrogating individuals and visiting his previous crime spots.
He was nabbed from the Old Delhi Railway Station while he was attempting to flee to Bihar.
Brutal murders
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Police revealed that Jha used to tie the hands of his victims, punish them, and then strangle them using some local nunchaku. Later, he used to cut the bodies into pieces while ensuring minimal blood splatter. He used to pack the pieces into a plastic bag, carry them in his modified rickshaw, and throw them at a specific location, usually near Tihar Jail.
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He used to leave handwritten notes along with the dismembered bodies bodies, challenging the police to catch him.
Early life
Jha used to work as a hawker in Delhi's weekly markets. He had married two times and had abandoned his first wife within a year. He has five daughters from his second wife and used to mostly live away from home.
'The Butcher of Delhi'
In July 2022, Netflix released a documentary series on Jha showing his life and criminal cases—Indian Predator: The Butcher of Delhi.
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(With inputs from agencies)