UP man helped MP serial killer sell looted goods: Cops

He (the businessman) provided the drugs that Khambra used to sedate his victims .... JAYDEEP PRASAD, Bhopal IGP

BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh police have zeroed in on a businessman from Uttar Pradesh, who allegedly sold looted goods and provided money and drugs to alleged serial killer Aadesh Khambra.

Khambra has confessed to murdering 33 people, including 30 truck drivers and cleaners, in four states.

Bhopal inspector general of police Jaydeep Prasad said they suspect Khambra and the gangs he worked with may have been involved in several similar murders and loot also in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan. This is apart from the four states he has confessed to committing murders in – Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

“A businessman from Uttar Pradesh used to take the looted goods from Khambra and give ~25,000 to ~50,000 per truck to him depending upon the value of the goods. The businessman managed other affairs except for the killings,’’ said Prasad.

“He provided the drugs that Khambra used to sedate his victims with before strangulating and killing them. His arrest, once it takes place, is expected to expose more cases from Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Odisha.”

Prasad said they have been approached by the Uttar Pradesh police with a number of unsolved cases of missing truck drivers and cleaners. “During interrogation, Khambra told us he might have committed crimes in Uttar Pradesh but needed to know about the specific cases to recall each one of them.”

Police say Khambra worked with gangs that operated at different levels. The people involved at a particular level were unaware of the functioning of the others. Police believe Khambra might have been involved in crimes from 2007 onwards and not 2010, as he had claimed.

Khambra, a resident of Mandideep in Madhya Pradesh’s Raisen district, was arrested from Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh on Friday. His accomplices — Jai- karan Prajapati and Tukaram Banjara — were earlier arrested for robbing a goods truck after killing its driver and cleaner last month, said police.

Madhya Pradesh police initially thought Khambra was a tailor-turned-petty criminal. But he confessed to having killed at least 33 people, mostly truckers, over the past eight years to “make more money”.

Prasad said, besides murders of truck drivers and cleaners, Khambra was allegedly also involved in the murder of a couple and their son at the behest of a contractor, Pawan Singh Solanki, who has been arrested.

Rahul Lodha, Bhopal (south) superintendent of police, who is leading a team for Khambra’s interrogation, said Khambra is a tough nut to crack.

“He is also playing his cards very tactfully. His statements are well-calculated to get an advantage at a later stage. Khambra says he became a criminal as his father, who was a subedar in the army, imposed too many restrictions on him.”

Lodha called Khambra a shrewd criminal. He had been arrested earlier four times in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Lodha said he did not attract the police’s attention regarding his heinous crimes.

“He could have gotten away this time too if his accomplice, Jaykaran, had not spilled the beans and we had not interrogated him scientifically and psychologically,’’ said Lodha.

Police are trying to know about the whereabouts of Ashok Khambra, who was supposed to be Aadesh Khambra’s role model. Ashok lived in Mandideep and allegedly used to murder truck drivers and cleaners.

He had escaped from police custody while on way to Bhopal more than a decade ago. Since then, his whereabouts are not known, police said.