Never got love from my dad, Bhopal serial killer tells cops

BHOPAL: I am like this because I never got any love from my father, alleged serial killer Aadesh Khamra told interrogators on Wednesday in a rare display of emotion.

"No one cared for me. I became an introvert. I had so much anger deep inside me that I didn't realise when I grew up to be a violent man," Khamra, who has admitted to killing 33 truck drivers, + told SP-south Lodha Rahul Kumar. Police are not taking his statement at face value, though. During interrogation, he has come across as a master manipulator - a skill that helped him befriend the men he planned to kill.

From what he has told police, his father Gulab Khamra retired from the Army as a naib subedaar, and brought parade-ground discipline home. "He says his father was very harsh with him in childhood. He used to beat Aadesh and throw him out of the house for even petty things," Lodha told TOI on Wednesday. "This coldblooded killer was himself a victim of childhood trauma. It's probably there that he developed the violent psyche that led him to commit murder without a shred of remorse," said a police officer, adding: "We are cross-checking everything he says. He's a very shrewd one."

Police have now found that his footprints in crime go back to 2005-06, when he started with extortion, and not 2010 as earlier believed.

Tailor-turned-serial killer Aadesh Khamra came in contact with people involved in crime very early in life and was influenced by his 'uncle', dreaded killer Ashok Khamra, who boasted of murdering over 100 people. His first truck heist was in 2007 when he came in contact with a gang and looted a truck. But he did not kill the driver, perhaps because he was only a cog in the wheel then, not the kingpin, say police. After this, he became an active member of the truck robbers' gang, and within three years had built his own band of highway robbers and his macabre drug-and-kill modus operandi.

"After committing the first theft, Khamra started murdering truck drivers because he did not want to leave any evidence that could help police trace him. He went on a robbing spree and was caught by Maharashtra police in 2010," said Kumar.