Killer repeatedly mocked and challenged police

"He be hanged by the neck till he is dead," said additional sessions judge Kamini Lau, sentencing serial killer Chandrakant Jha to death on Tuesday. Sumit Saxena reports.

"He be hanged by the neck till he is dead," said additional sessions judge Kamini Lau, sentencing serial killer Chandrakant Jha to death on Tuesday.

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Describing Jha as a "menace to the society", the court said the manner in which he has engaged himself in senseless serial killings showed that he was "beyond reform".

Hailing from Madhepura in Bihar, Jha had allegedly murdered six persons and after every murder, he would write letters to the police, challenging them to arrest him.

Jha used to allegedly invite victims to his house and would take special care of them only to murder them in cold blood and chop off their body parts.

He was arrested on May 20, 2007, near Mianwali Nagar in Pashchim Vihar in West Delhi. During the custodial interrogation, he had admitted to having beheaded several victims and dumping their body parts near Tihar jail. He had admitted that he used to tie the hands and feet of the victims before strangling them. Earlier, Jha was arrested in 1998 and 2007 in connection with murder cases but was acquitted for want of evidence.

"The convict is a mission-oriented and task-oriented serial killer whose only motive /mission was to expose, mock and challenge the police," the judge said, commenting on the psyche of the convict.

"The brutality so inflicted on the body of the deceased demonstrates that the convict does not possess basic humanness and lacks the psyche or mindset which may be amenable for any reform……". The sentence was awarded to Jha for the murder of 19-year-old Upender.

The judge had on Monday sentenced Jha to imprisonment till death in another murder case in which he had again dumped the victim's body parts near Tihar jail.

The judge said the convict had developed extreme hatred for the police. "After committing the crime, Jha talked of repeating it again and again by challenging the police that he would keep on sending such special gifts (bodies) to it after every 15 days," said Lau.