Kerala murders: A ‘devi’, a cultist couple, and a deviant killer
For close to two years, 60-year-old Bhagaval Singh, a traditional healer from Elanthoor in Pathanamthitta, spent hours online, interacting with a profile with the handle “Sreedevi”. Unbeknownst to Singh, the “Sreedevi” was a 52-year-old man accused of eight crimes in 15 years, including assault and rape.
This grisly story begins on Facebook. For close to two years, 60-year-old Bhagaval Singh, a traditional healer from Elanthoor in Pathanamthitta, spent hours online, interacting with a profile with the handle “Sreedevi”. A relationship was built over time, and he would often tell those around him that he considered the woman he was speaking to his “Devi”. Unbeknownst to Singh, the “Sreedevi” was a 52-year-old man accused of eight crimes in 15 years, including assault and rape.
Gradually, meticulously, Mohammad Shafi used the profile to convince Singh and his wife, Laila, 52, that if they wanted financial prosperity, they needed to perform a human sacrifice. Shafi would eventually lead the couple in the brutal murder of two women, four months apart – the victims were tortured, beheaded, chopped into pieces, possibly cannibalised, and buried in the garden in the couple’s home.
This week, when Kerala Police arrested Shafi, Singh, and Laila for murder, criminal conspiracy, abduction and destruction of evidence, the saga that unfolded was of brutal perversion, violent gratification, greed, gullibility, and of crimes the kind of which has rarely been recorded anywhere in India.
The events that would lead to the discovery of the murders began unfolding late last month.
On September 26, 52-year-old P Padma, from the village of Ponnurunni on the outskirts of Kochi, went missing. The next day, her family registered a complaint at the Kadavanthara police station. Two days later, with no word from Padma, a worried family met the Kochi police commissioner CH Nagaraju, who directed the local police to investigate the matter in earnest.
The breakthrough was immediate. CCTV footage from outside her home showed her get into a white Mahindra Scorpio, which was traced to Shafi. Padma worked as a lottery vendor, and inquiries with others in the business revealed that she had told them she was to meet a plantation owner in Pathanamthiitta.
There were also call detail records from the day she went missing that showed multiple conversations with a phone, saved on her phone as “Rasheed”, but traced to Shafi.
“The visuals helped us crack the case, followed by the phone call records. The last call to the number was also triangulated to an area in Pathanamthitta. For the next two weeks, we corroborated all the evidence,” said Nagaraju.
On October 8, the police zeroed in on Jose Thomas, a neighbour of Bhagaval Singh, who’s home crucially had CCTV cameras. The visuals established that the same white Mahindra Scorpio, carrying Padma and a bearded man, had reached Singh’s home late on September 26. On Sunday, the police detained Shafi, and the next day, Singh and his wife Laila.
What followed was the unraveling of a story most macabre.
The firstvictimSometime in April 2022, the Facebook account with the name Sreedevi, operated by Shafi, put out an advertisement about special occult rituals for those that wanted to attain wealth and prosperity. A similar advertisement was placed in local vernacular newspapers, each with the same phone number attached.
Since Singh and Laila already knew “Sreedevi”, they called the number, and expressed their interest in exploring what she had to offer. By June, a meeting was set up between the couple and Shafi – who now introduced himself as Rasheed, a follower of Sreedevi.
“He somehow convinced the both of them, through several meetings, that to grow financially they would require a human sacrifice. For this, while investigations are at a nascent stage, it seems the couple paid him ₹1.5 lakh,” a senior police officer said.
Meanwhile, on June 6, Shafi made contact with a lottery vendor named Roslin, in her fifties, from Kottayam district. Originally from Idukki, Roslin had previously worked as a saleswoman for an Ayurveda firm, but over the past few years, switched to selling lottery tickets. A divorcee with two children, she lived with a man named Sajeesh, much younger than her.
According to the police’s remand report to the Ernakulam magistrate’s court, Shafi “lured her” by offering ₹10 lakh to act in a film. She agreed, and was taken to Singh and Laila’s home in Pathanamthitta.
Once there, the three overpowered her, police said.
“They tied her hands and legs to a cot, and a cloth was inserted into her mouth. When she was conscious, the accused woman Laila inserted a knife in her vagina, and cut her throat. Then the second accused, Bhagaval Singh, cut off the victim’s breast. The three accused murdered her, and together cut her into pieces, and buried her in a pit,” the remand report said.
Roslin had told Sajeesh that she was going to meet one of her daughters, who is a teacher in a school in Uttar Pradesh. For nearly two months, Sajeesh ostensibly believed that she was there. It was only on August 17, when the daughter returned to Kerala, that a missing complaint was filed at the Kaladi police station. But, with little to go on, there was no headway in the case.
The second victim
By September, Singh had started to complain to Shafi – who sometimes appeared as his in-person avatar Rasheed and sometimes as the online persona Sreedevi – that the sacrifice had not worked because their financial condition had not exactly improved.
Shafi told him it was because the first sacrifice was “not effective” as the family suffered from a curse; another, grislier sacrifice was needed.
He deployed the same pattern to lure the next victim. Much like Roslin, Shafi identified Padma, also a lottery ticket seller in Kochi. Originally from Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu, Padma lived alone in Kochi, where she had moved two decades ago. According to her son, Selvarajan, who lives in Tamil Nadu, she got into the lottery vending six years ago.
On September 26, the police remand report says, Shafi “lured her by offering ₹15,000” for some work. She agreed, and travelled with him to Pathanamthitta.
“Once she was at Singh’s house, the three accused choked her with a plastic cord around her neck to make her unconscious. Shafi inserted a knife into Padma’s vagina and then he cut her throat. After that, they cut her into 56 pieces, put them into buckets, and buried her in a pit,” the police report said.
On Tuesday, from the green foliage in the garden of the one-storey home, both bodies were exhumed. Padma’s body parts were found in three separate pits; Roslin’s in one.
But this wasn’t the end of the ghastly ordeal. According to a senior officer, Laila, during her police interrogation, said that she, her husband, and Shafi, had cooked and eaten some of body parts of the two women as part of the “human sacrifice”.
When asked about the alleged cannibalism, Nagaraju said: “One of the accused has told us this during our interrogation, but we will probe this angle scientifically.”
The accusedSenior police officers said that investigations into Shafi have revealed that he had 10 cases registered against him in Kerala over the past 15 years, including rape, trespassing, theft, drunken driving, and cheating. In three of these cases, Shafi was out on bail, and was shown as “absconding” in the others.
On August 6, 2020, Shafi was arrested for the alleged rape and attempt to murder of a 75-year-old woman in Kolencherry, where he had also attacked the victim with a knife. “This man was perverted because in this case too, the knife was used on different parts of her body. He is a sexual pervert who causes harm, injury and death,” Nagaraju said.
Officers said that with the cases hanging over him like the sword of Damocles, Shafi would change his location every year to avoid detection, and often lived in migrant camps in Kochi and surrounding areas where minimal documentation was needed. He spent a year in jail before he was released on bail in the rape case in August 2021, and shifted base to Perumbavoor near Ernakulam.
Then, six months ago, he shifted to Gandhinagar in Kochi.
Shafi is married and has two daughters – the older one got married five years ago, the second is scouting for work. “I will not say if he was a good or a bad man. Let the police investigate everything. If he is found guilty, he should be given proper punishment,” his wife Nabeeza said.
In the sleepy village of Elanthoor in Pathanamthitta, 117km away from Kochi, Singh’s neighbours say they are in a state of shock. The family was connected to “healing” for at least two generations, and Singh was known as mild-mannered and polite. “It is difficult for us to believe. He was not money-minded and often treated his patients for free,” said Elanthoor panchayat president, Mercy Mathew.
Locals said that Singh had been married before, but divorced his first wife 10 years ago over “incompatibility”, and married Laila. He has two children from his first marriage, both of whom live abroad. “Their house is located on a large plot of land, and people used to throng here for treatment for fractures, bruises and other such ailments,” Elanthoor resident Gopan K said.
Active on social media, Singh’s Facebook page claims that he studied Economics at St Thomas College in Kolencherry, and at the government high school in Elanthoor. His page, full of Haikus, carried a post on May 3, 2021 congratulating the CPI(M) government on its assembly election win.
But Singh, according to the police, did not know until Wednesday that Shafi was Sreedevi – the “devi” who had brainwashed him. DCP Sasidharan Nair said, “It was only when all three were in custody that Singh first found out that his “Devi” was none other than Mohammad Shafi . When he heard, he broke down inconsolably.”
