This Delhi doctor lost count after 50 murders

New Delhi, July 30: An Ayurvedic doctor, allegedly the mastermind behind more than 50 murder cases of truck and taxi drivers across Delhi and its neighbouring states, was arrested from the city's Baprola area where he was living after jumping parole in January, police said on Wednesday.

Citing previous media reports, the police claimed he may have been involved in more than 100 murder cases but could not confirm the exact figure as the cases registered against him in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan are being investigated by the police of the concerned state.

Devender Sharma, 62, a BAMS degree holder, is from a village in Uttar Pradesh's Aligrah district and he was arrested by Delhi Police's Crime Branch team on Tuesday, six months after he jumped parole in a murder case, they said.

The police said Devender Sharma was convicted in several cases of kidnapping and murder. He was arrested twice earlier for running a fake gas agency in Uttar Pradesh and was also jailed for running a kidney racket in different states.

"Sharma was serving life sentence in Central Jail, Jaipur in a murder case and was out on parole for 20 days in January this year after spending 16 years in jail. But he jumped parole and stayed at his native village for a while before moving to Delhi at the beginning of March," police said.

"Earlier, he was living at the house of an acquaintance in Delhi's Mohan Garden and later moved to Baprola, where he married a widow. Our team arrested him after we received information about his hideout on Tuesday," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rakesh Paweriya said.

Sharma had come to Delhi with the intention of starting afresh and married his distant relative who knew about his criminal background, he said.

He then began a property business and was currently mediating the sale of one Marshal House in Connaught Place to a property dealer in Jaipur, they added.

His interrogation started on Tuesday and continued till Wednesday morning and he remained very calm and cooperated with the team. In fact, he disclosed the details about his previous involvement in crime himself, the police official said.

During the interrogation, he also confessed to being the mastermind behind more than 50 murders.

He was arrested for several murder cases reported in 2002-2004 but was convicted only in six-seven cases. His wife and children left him in 2004 after they came to know about his activities, he added.

When police questioned Sharma about the media reports, he told them that he had lost count after 50 murders and it had become difficult for him to remember the exact number of the killings executed till date.

After receiving his BAMS degree from Siwan in Bihar, he started his clinic in 1984 in Jaipur. Later in 1992, he invested Rs 11 lakh in a gas dealership scheme but was cheated and suffered a financial crisis. So, in 1995, he started a fake gas agency at Chhara village in Aligarh and later got involved in criminal activities, he said.

In 1994, Sharma also got involved in an interstate kidney transplant racket which was running in Jaipur, Ballabhgarh, Gurgaon and other places. He and several other doctors were arrested in 2004 in the Gurgaon kidney racket case, the officer said.

From 1994 to 2004, he claimed to have carried out more than 125 illegal kidney transplants for which he got Rs five to seven lakh per case, he said.

In 2001, he once again started a fake gas agency at Amroha but was arrested again.

After closure of his fake gas agency, he went to Jaipur and ran a clinic there till 2003.

During this period, he got in touch with his accomplices who used to hire taxis to Aligarh and then killed the drivers at secluded places and dumped their bodies in crocodile infested waters in the Hazara Canal, Kashganj.

"His accomplices robbed trucks carrying LPG cylinders by killing the driver. They unloaded the trucks in his fake gas agency and then the robbed truck would be dismantled in Meerut," the DCP said.