Police on Friday arrested an 18-year-old serial killer who allegedly bludgeoned four security guards to death and was driven by an urge to тАЬbecome famous.тАЭ In the evening, he was produced before a local court which sent him to police remand for a day.
The teenager, identified as Shivprasad Dhurve from his Aadhaar card, targeted sleeping security guards and killed three of them in Sagar district and the fourth one in Bhopal, police said. The first three killings came in the space of 72 hours earlier in the week, while the fourth victim, from Bhopal, fell prey a few hours before Dhurve was arrested Friday.
Flashing a ‘victory sign’, the 18-year-old appeared remorseless when he was taken to the local court’s premises by the police. He entered the court campus with his face and head covered with a white cloth and sitting in the middle of two cops in a police vehicle.
The court sent him to one-day police custody in one of the cases related to the killings, an official told PTI, adding they were going to seek his remand in other cases as well. Sagar Superintendent of Police Tarun Nayak said Dhurve has confessed to the four murders, adding he was influenced by social media and was dying to become famous.
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Police are also probing his role in the murder of another security guard in May. Dhurve was arrested in Bhopal on the basis of the location of a mobile phone which he had picked up from a victim in Sagar, said state Home Minister Narottam Mishra.
Police tracked Dhurve, a resident of Sagar district, as he was carrying the mobile phone of the second or third victim, Mishra said. тАЬDhurve wanted to earn but has a negative mindset. He watched video clips on social media platforms. He doesn’t appear to be a psychopath,тАЭ Sagar range inspector general (IG) Anurag told PTI.
Cops traced Dhurve after an informer told them that someone who looked like the person they were searching for was spotted in the Koh-e-Fiza area of Bhopal, he said. It appears Dhurve wanted to get тАЬnegative publicityтАЭ and also earn money, he said.
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Dhurve has admitted that he tried to kill a man in Pune after a dispute in Koregaon area where he worked as a hotel waiter, the police official said. He told police that he was booked for an attempt to murder in Pune under section 307 of the IPC and was out on bail, he added.
Police have recovered two mobile phones he pocketed after killing two security guards and also a cycle, another official said. Dhurve used to flee with the mobile phone and money of the victims, he said. Asked about reports that Dhurve was influenced by the character of тАЬRocky bhaiтАЭ from the film KGF2, Anurag said no such point came during his interrogation.
Dhurve was a labourer who worked at many places including Maharashtra, an official said. He has a brother and two sisters, but details about his parents are not available, he added. Dhurve killed Sonu Verma (23), who was a security guard in a marble shop in the area, by hitting him with a marble pillar in Khajuri area of Bhopal on Thursday night, said local police station in-charge Sandhya Mishra.
His first murder was in Sagar city, about 170 km north of Bhopal, where he killed Kalyan Lodhi, who was in his 50s and worked as a guard at a factory, on the intervening night of August 28-29. Lodhi’s head was smashed with a hammer. Shambhu Narayan Dube (60), who was on duty as security guard at an arts and commerce college, was killed on the intervening night of August 29-30 under Civil Lines police station limits. His head was found smashed with a stone, police said. Mangal Ahirwar, watchman at a house, was killed in Moti Nagar area on the intervening night of August 30-31 after being attacked with a stick.
