Goa serial killer may have killed four more

The body count of Mahanand Naik (40), the serial killer from Ponda in Goa who has allegedly confessed to killing 16 women in as many years, may have just gone up.

The body count of Mahanand Naik (40), the serial killer from Ponda in Goa who has allegedly confessed to killing 16 women in as many years, may have just gone up.

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Investigators suspect he is also involved in the murder of four more women in the past three-four years.

Inspector C.L. Patil of Ponda police station, the investigating officer, said on Tuesday that these women came from places in and around Ponda. They initially went missing and then their bodies were found. “There is reason to suspect these are Naik’s handiwork,” he said.

He said several details about the women, like their profiles and the circumstances under which their bodies were found, bore an uncanny similarity to Naik’s other victims. Like, all four women were in the 25-35 age group, unmarried, plain looking and from the lower income group. All four were also robbed of their ornaments and strangled to death. The police plan to confront Naik once they have sufficient information.