Gorakhpur: In a series of incidents in which houses getting broken into at night and sleeping women being hit on their heads, the Gorakhpur Police in Uttar Pradesh arrested a man. There were five such incidents over four months, and one of the victims died while the other four were injured, NDTV reported.
The arrestee is identified as Ajay Nishad, and he faces multiple cases, including murder.
According to police, Nishad has a criminal history, as he was accused in a 2022 child abuse case and spent six months in jail. He came out on bail and lived for some time in Surat before he returned to Gorakhpur.
He made his first committed his attack on a woman on July 30. He entered a house, hit a woman on the head and fled with some jewellery.
Police said that the first attack set the modus of operandi for the following four incidents. Senior police officer Dr Gaurav Grover said that the arrestee started with a robbery, then attacked a woman and hit her on the head.
“He then adopted this as a modus operandi," Grover said.
The second incident occurred on August 12, and the victim here received a severe blow, which took her to her death. Three more incidents followed, first on August 26, then on November 10 and November 14, police informed.
According to Officer Grover, the police have established Ajay Nishad’s involvement in the crime through CCTV footage of the localities where he committed the crime. He said that Nishad described the chain of events during the questioning, while the police corroborated the complaints in all the cases to conclude that he had committed all five crimes.
Police also said that some of the complainants spotted the accused before he disappeared from the crime scenes. They described him as a young man who always wore black clothes and remained barefoot. Grover said the police questioned people and identified suspects based on these inputs.
Finally, police recovered several blunt objects, including an iron rod and a bed leg, which were suspected of being used in the crimes. Police said that they would put the case before a fast-track court and ensure strict punishment for the accused, NDTV reported.