The most intriguing and challenging cases that crime departments across the world come across is serial crime, be it house-breaking or killing or rape. The compulsive felon holds great fascination to the sleuth and the citizen alike.
The mystery of the 19{+t}{+h}century serial killer Jack the Ripper has never been solved and is still a topic of speculation.
Was he a dotor or was he a coal miner from Yorkshire? It took over a decade for police in half a dozen countries to arrest Charles Sobhraj. We made films about it him and a girl went and fell in love with him.
And now we have the Syringe Man of West Godavari. As serial offenders go, he is a bit cut-price but he has generated some excitement for the rather easily excited audiovisual media.
So what makes this man go about poking women with syringes? “Serial offenders are like drug addicts,” says Prof. M.V.R. Raju, senior professor in the Psychology Department of Andhra University.
“They get an adrenalin rush or a sense of intoxication after committing an offence, which may last for a few hours, days or weeks. Once the effect comes down, they feel like committing another crime.”
What rush might Mr Syringe Man get from sneaking up on women and giving them a blank jab of a hypodermic? Despite all the coverage he is getting in the TV news channels, Syringe Man is not likely to go down in history of notorious crime.
But this is not the first time that the police of AP have been flummoxed by a serial offender, some of them of real menace.
In 2011, Aziz Khan Mohammad Pathan, was arrested for committing 15 serial murders of women in Andhra Pradesh, Vidarbha and Marathwada.
He would target lonely women at home or on the farm and strangulate them to death.
Then we had a serial duo. Taluri Ramulu and Bala Narasimha together killed about eight women, all sex workers. They would lure the women from pick-up points, take them to isolated places and strangulate them with their saree.
The most notorious serial killer, however, was Dandupalya Krishna, leader of the Dandupalya gang.
The gang killed about 42 women and were said to be necrophilic.
Rachakonda Sambasiva Rao alias Psycho Samba, raped and killed about 20 women in the West Godavari-Krishna belt. He was arrested in 2012, but escaped from custody and is at large. Rumours had it that he adopted a modus operandi: pricking women with syringes.
So now we know why the Syringe Man of West Godavari has excited our attention.
Serial offenders
According to Prof. Raju, most serial offenders are psychopaths and suffer from ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) or a personality disorder such as split personality. That makes detecting them difficult.
“A serial offender may seem as normal as your neighbour. But he or she can turn into a beast in a trice,” said Prof. Raju.
Published - September 05, 2015 12:00 am IST
