Serial killer blames it all on childhood trauma

BHOPAL: I am like this because I never got any love from my father, alleged serial killer Aadesh Khamra told interrogators on Wednesday in a rare display of emotion.
“No one cared for me. I became an introvert. I had so much anger deep inside me that I didn’t realise when I grew up to be a violent man,” Khamra, who has admitted to killing 33 truck drivers, told SP-south Lodha Rahul Kumar.Police are not taking his statement at face value, though. During interrogation, he has come across as a master manipulator — a skill that helped him befriend the men he planned to kill.
From what he has told police, his father Gulab Khamra retired from the Army as a naib subedaar, and brought parade-ground discipline home. “He says his father was very harsh with him in childhood. He used to beat Aadesh and throw him out of the house for even petty things,” Lodha told TOI on Wednesday. The killer believes this upbringing led to a change in his behaviour and personality.
“This coldblooded killer was himself a victim of childhood trauma. It’s probably there that he developed the violent psyche that led him to commit murder without a shred of remorse,” said a police officer, adding: “We are cross-checking everything he says. He’s a very shrewd one.”
Police have now found that his footprints in crime go back to 2005-06, when he started with extortion, and not 2010 as earlier believed. Khamra came in contact with people involved in crime very early in life and was influenced by his ‘uncle’, dreaded killer Ashok Khamra, who boasted of murdering over 100 people. His first truck heist was in 2007 when he came in contact with a gang and looted a truck. But he did not kill the driver, perhaps because he was only a cog in the wheel then, not the kingpin, say police. After this, he became an active member of the truck robbers’ gang, and within three years had built his own band of highway robbers and his macabre drug-and-kill modus operandi.
“After committing the first theft, Khamra started murdering truck drivers because he did not want to leave any evidence that could help police trace him. He went on a robbing spree and was caught by Maharashtra police in 2010,” said Lodha. He got bail from Nagpur jail after one-and-a-half years and roped in some of the criminals he had met during court transits. When he was back on the highway with his killer smile, he had perfected the art of clean crimes, Lodha said.
He avoided toll booths and would strip every bit of cloth from his victims. In fact, he would still be on the highway murdering people had it not been for a goof-up by his accomplice, Jaikaran, who committed a murder without his knowledge and dumped the body carelessly near the locality where the victim lived. A cloth tag led police to Jaikaran and then to Aadesh. Jaikaran had assisted him in at least 11 murders, say police.
After investigating the killings by Khamra and his gang, police realised that they followed a pattern and committed most of their killings on NH-6, which runs from Mumbai to Kolkata. To sell the cargo and truck, they usually took the Bhopal-Guna-Gwalior state highway. Khamra has told police that they chose this route as it has only a single toll booth till Gwalior.
Police are issuing an advisory to truck drivers, cleaners and transporters to prevent them from becoming targets of highway robbers. “Don’t give lift to strangers in the lure of quick money, don’t get friendly with strangers, including other truck drivers, and don’t share food or drinks with them,” the note says.