Darshana Naik, 21, lived in a small hut with her family members in Shiroda, about 40 km south of Goa’s capital- Panaji. She used to stay alone at home while her family members go to work in the paddy fields.
On September 30, 1994, Darshana was found hanging from a cashew tree at Bambolim with her own dupatta, close to Goa Medical College and Hospital in Panaji.
Just two months earlier, another woman Gulabi Gaonkar, 30, was found dead at Khande-par, 28 km south-east of Panaji. A preliminary probe revealed Gulabi was working as a tailor in the Ponda market and a bearded man was meeting her regularly.
As a suspect, police arrested Mahanand Naik who was an auto-rickshaw driver. However, the cops had to let him go after other drivers said he had been at the auto stand on the day of Gulabi’s disappearance.
Not even a single person had noticed the accused. Gulabi’s murder was the first of his 16 murders and had given him the template he would follow to snare and kill women around Panaji over the next 15 years.
Why and how did he murder the girls?
The reason for his murder was just sex and money, and perhaps most of all, the perverse thrill of killing. His targets were mostly poor women, who had no support system and had slim hopes of finding a good match.
He stalked women all around him and carefully picked out the most vulnerable ones in the 20-35 years age bracket.
For instance, his third victim was a poor housemaid Vassanti Gaude. After befriending her, he promised to give her Rs 50,000 and called her to a deserted place and she was never seen again.
How did he evade arrest?
Every time he killed a woman, he took all their money. He also looted their jewellery and took them to a goldsmith and made a distress sale pleading serious illness in the family. His footprints were everywhere and had police joined the dots, they would have caught him much before.
But all of Mahanand’s victims were so poor that they couldn’t hire a good lawyer or press police to investigate. He killed three women in 2005, 1 in 2006, 5 in 2007, and 2 in 2008. His last murder in April 2009 was to be his undoing.
How police traced him down?
On January 14, 2009, Yogita Naik, 30 from Nagzar Curti in Ponda was reported missing ornaments worth Rs 80,000. Her body was found at a cashew plantation a day later. The case would have been forgotten like the others, but in March, Yogita’s family approached an inspector to investigate the case.
The Inspector opened the investigation with Yogita’s call record and found that the SIM card was active and frequently used to call a 23-year-old woman. Police interrogated the woman and found out she was a rape survivor herself and the caller was none other than her rapist, Mahanand.
This was a staggering finding– the first suspect in the 15-year-old Gulabi case was the likely link in all 16 murders.
After his arrest on April 21, 2009, Mahanand told police his modus operandi. He would introduce himself as a businessman to his prey. He invariably offered the women ice cream at their first meeting, enact a short whirlwind romance, and then invite them home. Whoever agreed to go with him was robbed and killed.
Mahanand, who is 54 now, has spent the past 14 years in jail. A mob burnt his house in Shiroda while his wife, a Central government employee, was sent to a safe destination.