The serial killer would strangle women with a cycle chain and then hit them on the head till they died
A man, accused in a series of murders and sexual assaults on women, was found guilty and sentenced to death by a court in Bengal for the rape and killing of a schoolgirl in West Bengal's Purba Bardhaman district.
Kamaruzzaman Sarkar, who was known as a serial 'chain' killer for strangling his victims with bicycle chains, was sentenced to be hanged to death by the additional district and sessions judge Tapan Kumar Mondal of Kalna court after being found guilty of the rape and murder of the girl.
Sarkar, a small-time trader of scrap materials, is being tried in other courts for alleged sexual assault and murder of at least five other women and murderous attacks on at least three other women in Purba Bardhaman and neighbouring Hooghly districts.
Following the order on Monday, Sarkar's lawyer said that an appeal will be filed before the Calcutta High Court, challenging the conviction and sentence.
The serial killer who targeted women when they were alone at home, was arrested in June last year.
The 42-year-old serial killer, who would come wearing "trendy clothes", would then allegedly enter homes of the victims during the afternoon hours on the pretext of taking electricity meter readings and then attacks the women with a cycle chain and an iron rod, according to the prosecution.
Some women had managed to escape the attack by the man, who would try to strangle them with the cycle chain and then hit them on the head repeatedly to ensure they die.
Though he would escape with some valuables from the houses of his victims, the police said theft was not the main motive.
Instead, sexually assaulting and murdering the women seemed to be his main motive, the district police told news agency Press Trust of India.
Police said that Sarkar, who is a married man and has three children, had allegedly even inserted sharp materials into the genitals of some of his victims after killing them.
Following the murder of a middle-aged woman, the district police had circulated CCTV footage of a suspect wearing a red helmet and riding a red motorbike to all police stations, following which he was caught at a police check-point.
Sarkar is suspected to have killed a woman on January 27 last year, police said. Then, on April 4, 2019, two women were killed in the same manner within a few hours of each other in the district.
This was followed by the killing of another woman soon after, the police said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)