A former teacher in southern India has confessed to murdering 20 women who he lured with promises of marriage and wealth before poisoning them with cyanide, police said.
Mohan Kumar, 46, was picked up by police a fortnight ago and has admitted to the string of killings in the southern state of Karnataka during the last five to six years.
"The confidence trickster used to lure innocent women promising to marry them and then elope with them to safe locations in other districts," Mangalore superintendent of police, A.S. Rao, told AFP.
"He would then rape and poison them with cyanide-laced pills."
Kumar, who used the alias Anand, is being interrogated about murders in four to five towns across the state, including the capital Bangalore, and is suspected in other cases in the neighbouring state of Kerala.
The district police have set up a special team to investigate the suspect, from a small village about 20km from Mangalore, who was sacked as a teacher in a government school in 2004 for poor attendance.
Rao said Kumar had explained he would marry and kill frequently in some periods before lying low for months. His preferred method was to take his victims on a trip.
"On the pretext of taking the wife' to a distant temple, he would stay at a lodge en route where he would give the cyanide-laced pills and vanish," Rao said.
Kumar would tell the women that the pills were necessary to prevent them falling pregnant.
The 20th victim, according to his confession, was a 35-year-old woman called Poornima from Manjeshwar in Kerala.
"Her parents identified Kumar as the person who had approached them to marry their daughter. After the marriage, he took her to Bangalore and checked into a lodge in downtown and killed her," Rao said.
Front page
RSS Feed