Three Gruesome Murders Within 24 Hours. What Snapped?

What kind of psychological impulse leads a person to kill another human being?

On 7 February, police identified a headless body found in Rampuram, Tamil Nadu.   Actress Sasirekha was decapitated by her husband Ramesh Shankar.

His interrogation revealed how he killed Sasirekha in a fit of rage, stripped her and chopped her head off to make it look like she was raped and murdered.

Ramesh Shankar and his live-in-partner kept Sasirekha’s head locked in a bathroom for two days before throwing it into a canal.

On 7 February, the grave of 15-year-old Nicholas was found in a locked house in Pune. His mother Varita is absconding along with her partner Yunus Rehman.

The boy’s body was recovered from three feet below the bedroom floor. The mismatched tiles gave the grave away. Police suspects Nicholas was murdered after he informed his grandparents about his mother’s affair with Yunus.

On the same day in New Delhi, a 21-year-old Arzoo Singh’s charred body was found stuffed inside the ventilation shaft of her friend Naveen Khatri’s house.

Khatri was to get married to another girl after both his and Singh’s parents objected to their marriage. Arzoo’s family believes Khatri killed her to avoid any trouble during his wedding.

The three murders were solved within 24 hours of each other. But before you begin to shudder at the sordid affairs, or brush it aside as another crime statistic, experts warn psychopathic tendencies can surface in an instant, without warning and more often than not with disastrous results.

The three situations in Ramapuram, Pune and Delhi – an extra-marital affair, divorce, and heartbreak, are commonplace. But not everyone under duress turns murderous, says Dr Kaminidevi Bhoir who serves as the Honorary Psychiatry Counsellor for the Mumbai Police.

This tendency develops in people who turn maniacal when they are not gratified or if they are insulted. They lose touch with reality and when that happens they turn psychopaths. This can also happen when a situation precipitates, that’s when the urge to kill is heightened. They set a goal and will finish off whatever comes in between. 

Dr Kaminidevi Bhoir, Honorary Psychiatry Counsellor, Mumbai Police

Trauma during a child’s development phase – sex abuse or family conflicts are among the factors which can lend itself to either depressive or maniacal behaviour. This is not to say that all children who’ve undergone such experiences grow up to exhibit such extreme behaviour. Individual coping mechanisms have a lot to do with how one shapes up, says Dr Bhoir.

Experts agree that no neurological condition can be 100% predictive. But most psychopaths are in control of their behaviour and are aware that they’re committing a crime.

Sociologist Deepak Mehta looks at it from the point of dehumanising the victim. Looking at these three specific cases, one can say the accused did not think they were taking a human life, he says.

Some of the evidence seem to suggest that the perpetrators were not looking at their victims as objects, not human beings. There is no mourning, no ritual, but a task that is completed and then buried.

Deepak Mehta, Sociologist

This lack of mourning or ritual, he adds, is what perhaps leads them to believe that they can get away.