Stoneman of India | Why was he never found?

I'm embracing multiculturalism again in my serial killer hall of infamy, featuring murders that took place in India, committed by someone the authorities suspected was of Indian nationality.

I'm saying suspect because this killer was never caught. As another one that got away, the Stoneman joins the likes of Britain's Jack the Ripper, America's Zodiac Killer, Babysitter Killer, and perhaps the best named serial killer of all time, the Servant Girl Annihilator.

Today you'll see what Stoneman did and why he was never caught, in this blog of the serial killer series, Indian Stoneman.

This isnt the tale of the worst Indian serial killer though, as there have been even worse killers such as Raman Raghav, called India's Jack the Ripper, who killed 41 people in the 1960s. Surinder Koli, a servant that along with his employer, Moninder Singh Pandher, brutally killed, dismembered, and some say ate pieces of 19 young women just over a decade ago. Possibly India's most disturbing killers, on par with Britain's strangest couple, Fred and Rose West. And lastly, Charles Sobhraj, who was half Indian, the world's biggest celebrity psycho.

But let's now look at Stoneman.

As I don't know who he is, I obviously won't be doing a bio, though I suspect the killer was a man. Nobody knows if he was cruel to animals, had sermons about the devil delivered to him by an angry father, or if he was abused by his biology teacher.

What I do know is that a man nicknamed the Stoneman as you'll get to why he got this mythological-sounding sobriquet killed 13 people over just six months in Kolkata, starting in June 1989.

All those victims were homeless, what the Hindustani Times called pavement dwellers.

If you went to Kolkata (sometimes called the City of Joy) back then, you'd have seen many of these sidewalk sleepers among the many millions of people that lived there (there were about 50,000 homeless in 1989).

At the time of the murders, the LA Times wrote, His victims are street people, Calcutta's helpless beggars, lunatics, and rickshaw pullers who share their muddy concrete beds with the city's rats, garbage, and diseases. The sad thing is that all those victims were never named. No one came to collect the bodies, so they were in effect non-existent in official terms. They were usually found in dark areas, where I suppose the murderer could easily creep away unseen.

I should add here that other murders have taken place in India that resembled the Kolkata Killer's modus operandi. Notably the murders of homeless people in Mumbai in the 80s.

Was it the same man, or a copycat?

The police don't know.

I say man because Stonewoman doesn't really suit the Modus Operandi.

That's because the victims had a massive stone dropped on their heads while they were sleeping. The media reported that the stone or concrete slab was usually 65 lbs (30kg), or about the average weight of a healthy 9-year old boy.

Anyway, there is a good chance that the killer was the same man.

The time frameworks and as I said, the Modus Operandi is exactly the same. It's a 1,250 mile (2,014 km) drive from Mumbai to Kolkata, but he probably took the train. That has taken him around 32 hours, and with tickets today at $1.82, it would have cost him next to nothing if Stoneman didn't mind roughing it in second class.

So, in 1985, some Indian homeless people, usual beggars by trade, were found with their skulls caved in. These were mainly in the neighborhood of Sion, on the fringes of Mumbai (some might better know this city as Bombay, but it hasn't been called that since 1995).

The Mumbai murders then stopped in 1988. They started again in 1989 in Kolkata and then stopped after about 6 months.

What did the police know? Very little, only that it was assumed the killer was well built. Police also thought that it could have been the work of a group of people, they just didn't know.

One man survived an attack, but not surprisingly he didn't get a good look at his assailant before a stone was dropped on him. I am not sure, though, if this is the lunatic that came forward in '89 and said he was a victim. In that case, it turned out he was lying, and the cut on his head was a rat bite.

Indian media reports that another similar set of murders happened in 2003. There were nine, maybe ten murders in Kolhapur (400km from Mumbai).

The victims had had their heads smashed in or hacked at by a knife. India Today wrote that a young man was found with his head smashed beyond recognition in a park in West Bengal in 2016.

The report states that locals feared a return of the Stoneman.

What does smashed beyond recognition look like? Well, for those of you who aren't queasy, there are photos of Stoneman's work online.

So, why was this crazy killer doing this?

There's no easy answer to this question, but one online sleuth believes that the killings were part of some kind of religious ritual, that the murders were tantra-related.

According to this writer, that neighborhood I mentioned, Sion, sees a lot of this tantric stuff going on. You might also be surprised to hear that beheadings in India as part of these rituals are not uncommon. A quick search reveals a 2015 story of a 4-year old boy getting his head chopped off in India as part of a ritual, and there are other cases of this happening over the last few years, mainly to women.

Sounds crazy, but if you know your Hindu Goddesses and ancient tantric rituals, you'll know the goddess Chhinnamasta took off her own head.

Nowadays and in the past, a very small minority of superstitious folks in India believed that human sacrifice such as decapitating someone could lead to health, wealth, and prosperity.

This was the basis of the incredibly scary movie called Hereditary.

Another report in 2017 said a young man even chopped off his mother's head in West Bengal with a 'khargo' (or sharp knife) as an offering to the Goddess Kali. Look at images of her online and see what she's holding in one of her four hands. Yep, a severed head.

It seems that in India, it's not totally

unreasonable to suggest that the Stoneman murders could have been tantric human sacrifices.

If that isn't enough out-of-this-world-thinking for you, one Indian writer says that at the time of the murders, some superstitious people in the cities of Kolkata and Mumbai thought the murders were the work of some kind of supernatural entity. Others just thought the killings were brutal and done by an insane person.

We are going back to the Stone Age, is what Rachhpal Singh, the deputy commissioner of the Kolkata police, said at the time of the killings. Killing each other with stones shows what kind of progress we have made here, he said.

The cop added that even though people feared this killer, it was said that the public wasn't too concerned about the victims. That was because they were all poor and homeless. As for the other homeless, he said that they didn't care too much about the murders, because life was already pretty tough for them :(

The police were under a lot of pressure at the time to catch this killer, so much so that they summarily arrested and imprisoned lots of people. Human Rights groups said many of those were tortured by police to extract a confession. But, to no avail.

So, what do you think?

Psychotic Killer or religious fanatic?

Let me know in the comments!

Also, be sure to check out my blogs on Ted Bundy, Harold Shipman, and Ed Gein!

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