Cyanide Mohan - Part 1

Source : Openthemagazine.com article by Anil Budur Lulla - https://openthemagazine.com/features/india/cyanide-mohan/

Bollywood corner:

RangiTaranga                                Ratsasan                               Samay

Full Story :

This prolific killer lived & operated in the picturesque coastal towns of Mangaluru in the south Western state of Karnataka. He was given the moniker Cyanide Mohan for his excruciating & deadly murder weapon.

Catalyst for the Investigation:

On June 17th 2009 22-year-old Anitha went missing from the village of Barimaru in the laid back and scenic district of Bantwal.
Anitha had left home with gold, money and an expensive cellphone. It was as if Anitha had simply walked out & vanished without a trace. 
The local police were as usual insipid and unreactive to the plight of poor villagers who went to them for help, especially to find a missing woman.

Then came a twist in the disappearance that lit the fire sky high. The local Hindu Communal groups started a baseless rumor that Anitha had been a victim of Love Jihad and needed to be found & rescued at once.
Police was forced into looking for Anitha because the protestors threatened to burn down the Police station if they didn’t find Anitha soon. 

Unbeknownst to the Officer & the family, Anitha’s body had actually been found in a Ladies Bathroom at a Bus stand 100 miles away. She was found deceased, frothing at the mouth.

The Senior Police team called in from Bangalore tried to trace Anitha’s cell phone and landline. They found that there was a number that she spoke to quite often & for long. It belonged to a man in the neighboring city of Coorg. The man was located but surprisingly he said that the cell phone was being used by his sister Kaveri who had herself been missing since March that year.

Kaveri’s call records were scanned and the number she talked to for the longest and late into the night was traced to a woman called Pushpa. Pushpa had been missing for a whole year.

Keeping the chain of investigation going, Pushpa’s call records led the officers to yet another missing woman called Vinutha who had been missing the year before.

Bit by bit, number by number the Bantwal Police uncovered a trail of 20 missing women from the villages and towns surrounding Mangalore. It was as if a curse bound these women together to an unknown fate.

The initial suspicion of the Police in this case was that it was some sort of a Human Trafficking ring. Since the majority of these women came from marginalized groups where they were at a socio-economic disadvantage because of which they were all unmarried at that time, the cops jumped to the conclusion that they had either willingly or deceptively been trafficked into sex work.

They raided many small motels and shady establishments in search of this apparent gang but couldn’t find a single clue that it ever existed.

The discovery of such a large number of seemingly connected women prompted the Police to seek out more information about unidentified decedents from neighboring jurisdictions.
To their horror they found that all the missing women they had connected through the cell phone records of Anitha had been found dead, including Anitha herself.

These 20 women had been found, frothing at the mouth in the Ladies Bathrooms of various major Intercity Bus stands. They were all dressed in bridal Saris but not wearing a single piece of jewelry which is highly unusual for traditional Indian women btw.

 Autopsies had been conducted on them and all were found to have **died from poisoning**. The viscera of only 2 women had been preserved by some diligent Medical Officer and the cause of death was finally determined from that evidence. It was Cyanide.

Despite there being clear evidence of a suspicious death, all the cases were simply marked as suicide cases. The pictures of the bodies were published in the local newspapers but since no one came to claim them their cases were discarded into the abyss of unsolved cases in India.

In October of 2009, the Cyber Cell of the Crime Branch found the IMEI number of Anitha's new cell phone and were able to trace it to a village called Deralakatte. A young boy using the phone told them his uncle Mohan Kumar had given it to him recently.

The Cops raided Mohan's home & caught him without much drama.

The then 46 year old Mohan was a short, mild mannered school teacher who had 2 wives & 4 children that he would split his time staying with in turns.

In his possession they found visiting cards with various fake names, 8 tablets of cyanide, 4 mobile phones, jewelry belonging to his victims including Anitha’s jewelry. 

Most importantly they found a diary in which Mohan had meticulously written down names & details of dozens upon dozens of women. The ones that did not respond favorably to his advances were crossed out in red ink.

Mohan was arrested and taken in for interrogation. Although he was being accused of killing the 20 women the Police had linked to him so far, **Mohan actually confessed to killing 32 women!**

His MO:

He would hang around Intercity Bus stands or Bus stations and other crowded waiting areas like those of Govt. offices, Temples etc, keenly observing and taking note of single women in the crowd who kept their head down and gaze low when they walked.

He would start casually talking to these women usually opening with the lines “Do I know you..? I have seen you somewhere!”. If they too responded positively, he would ask their names. He would then make up an alias and a last name matching the caste of the victim and claim to be from their community.

He always told them he had a stable Gov’t job, was single & just looking for the right woman to marry.
He would then play on the vulnerability of these women and exploit their disadvantaged circumstances by proposing marriage with no demand for substantial Dowry. In these parts of India that no Dowry clause is not only unusual but almost certainly an offer that most women in those socio-economic sectors could not deny without good cause.

Mohan would ask the victim to keep their relationship secret. Over a period of 2 months, ultimately convincing them to elope with him with Gold jewelry & cash for the marriage ceremony. 

He would then take the victim to a faraway city via bus. The Bus stations he picked were usually either Hassan, Madikeri, Mysuru or the Majestic Terminal in Bengaluru.

Once they reached the city, he would book them into an inexpensive travel lodge right next to the bus station under fake names. Mohan would then somehow convince the victim into having sex with him. 

The next day he would ask the victims to leave the jewelry in the Lodge for safety & that the Jewelry is only for her to wear when she meets Mohan’s parents later. Then he would lead the victim to a Bus station pretending to go to a Temple or registration office.

While waiting for the Bus he would give them Cyanide laced capsules calling them Morning after contraceptive pills. Mohan would instruct them to go into the bathroom, lock the door and take the pill as it would make them throw up.

The poor women innocently believed him and did exactly as he told them to do, dying a most painful death in minutes as he waited for the crowds to discover their bodies before vanishing.

Possible motivating factor:

Paying for 2 households on a meager school teacher’s salary was not cutting it for Mohan. This is when he hatched a plan to use the one skill he had – luring women with his charms to rob them. The fact that he was romancing them & deceptively sleeping with them was an added bonus for him. Or was it the other way round? What do you think?

In 2003, he stole the jewelry from a woman and pushed her into the Nethravati river hoping she will drown. However, she survived and took him to court where he was imprisoned for a little while but was ultimately acquitted of charges on appeal to a higher court.

Now While this scumbag was in jail, he met a Goldsmith who was in jail for improper disposal of Cyanide used in the polishing of precious metals which caused the death of cattle. Mohan learned all about Cyanide in jail from his new buddy – that it is a highly controlled substance and how only Goldsmiths with the proper license are legally allowed to purchase it from chemist shops.
After having to be in jail he vowed never to leave victims alive again. 

Trial & Sentencing:

Like most narcissistic egomaniacs do, Mohan represented himself in court. 

Police found a witness, a survivor who had clawed her way back from death. Kumar had posed as a Plantation supervisor & lured her to a lodge in Madikeri, but thankfully she had only licked the cyanide capsule and not swallowed it. She testified anonymously via video camera.

After a lengthy series of court cases ultimately Mohan Kumar, Cyanide Mohan was convicted in all 20 cases of murder, rape, robbery, abduction and various other fraud related charges and awarded with 5 death penalties and 15 life sentences. 

The apathy shown here by LE is appalling. They could have easily caught this guy at any given time over the 5 year period that he was hunting and preying on vulnerable members of society.

#Tags:

#truecrime #desitruecrime #crimesfromtheeast #podcast #truecrimepodcast #truecrimeindia 

#indiatruecrime #womenwhopodcast #talesfromIndia #staysafe #murder #karma  #browngirlswhopodcast #desipodcasters #mangalorecrime #crimesolved #serialkiller

#indianserialkiller #cyanidemohan #cyanidekiller #lazypolicework