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‘Serial killer’ held in Patiala, police say auto-rickshaw driver killed 7 in 22 years
A serial killer’s 22-year run finally ended after Patiala Police arrested him. From 1995 to 2017, Jagroop Singh had killed 7 people.
Patiala Police on Friday arrested an alleged serial killer claimed they have cracked seven murders in the past 22 years across Patiala and Ludhiana in Punjab and Yamunanagar in Haryana.
Jagroop Singh (47) of the Basti Badlowal area in Ludhiana district is an auto-rickshaw driver and is accused of killing husbands of two of his paramours in 2004 and 2011. Police claim he confessed to committing the first murder in 1995. None of the murders had been solved.
He was finally arrested after the police began investigating a blind murder in which Rajinder Singh (43) was killed in the Model Town area of Patiala on December 30.
Deputy inspector general of police (DIG, Patiala range) Sukhchain Singh Gill said a police team working on Rajinder’s murder zeroed in on Jagroop on the basis of clues collected from the scene of crime.
Gill said Rajinder was murdered after Jagroop suspected him of having illicit relationship with his alleged lover Hema (43) who has also been named in the case. She has not been arrested.
“Jagroop and Rajinder were known to each other and shared a drink on the day of crime. Jagroop laced Rajinder’s drink with sedatives before killing him with sharp-edged weapons and a brick on the night of December 30,” Gill said.
Police said Jagroop returned to Ludhiana after committing the crime. But a CCTV camera near the crime spot had recorded his presence which led to his arrest.
Trail of murders
The DIG said the accused confessed to have murdered a woman with his friends for the first time while committing a robbery in Shimlapuri area of Ludhiana in 1995. He killed another woman in the Badowal area of the city in 1998.
In 2004, Jagroop developed illicit relations with a Haryana-based woman Paramjeet Kaur and killed her husband Kuldeep Singh in Yamunagar, the police said. “After strangulating Kuldeep, he stacked the body in a trunk and threw it in the Yamuna,” the police said.
In 2011, Jagroop developed illicit relationship with Hema of Ludhiana, who now lives in Patiala. “Jagroop and Hema murdered her husband Nand Lal at Ludhiana’s Kakowal village and dumped his mutilated body in a vacant plot,” the police said. Hema then started living with her parents.
In May 2015, Jagroop in connivance with Paramjeet killed Patiala’s Anil Kumar and stacked his body in a briefcase before dumping it at Vikas Nagar, the police said. Paramjeet and Anil Kumar were allegedly involved in a flesh trade racket. She decided to eliminate him after he came to know of her involvement in a snatching incident.
A year later, Jagroop and Hema killed Paramjeet in Ludhiana’s Dehlon locality after she discovered their relationship, the police said. In April 2016, police had registered a case of murder against unidentified people. Following Jagroop’s arrest on Friday, the police registered a case against him and Hema under Sections 302 (murder) and 201 (destruction of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
