Serial killer on the run for nine years held in Surat

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat ATS on Thursday detained serial killer Aslam alias Aman Abdul Karim Shaikh, from Surat’s Vesu area. Wanted for five murders, Shaikh had been on the run for nine years. He lived under a false identity — Lala Kamlesh Patel — married a nurse and had three children. He worked as a ward boy in the same private hospital where his wife worked.
DSP K K Patel said Shaikh was from a well-to-do family which owned a petrol pump and a tractor agency near Devchokdi, Balasinor. He got into bad company and joined a gang that used to kill tractor drivers and then sell off the tractors and trolleys elsewhere.
Shaikh committed his first serious crime, a double murder, in 2008, when he and his accomplices intercepted a tractor driver. “They beat up the driver and his helper and threw them in the river after tying their hands and feet. Then they sold off the tractor,” Patel said.
After tasting success in the crime, this became the gang’s settled modus operandi. “In a second case, they fought with the driver of a tractor trolley loaded with grass. Shaikh and his associates threw the driver into Dehgam canal after tying his hands and legs,” Patel said.
“Once they chanced upon a trailer loaded with five new tractors near Modasa on Shamlaji Highway. The abducted the driver in a jeep, threw him into Halol-Kalol canal after tying his hands and feet and sold off the trailer and the tractors,” Patel said. “In Chhota Udepur, they abducted a tractor driver in an MUV, tied his hands and feet and threw him into the canal near Anand. They sold off the tractor at Himmatnagar. In all, Shaikh is involved in five murders and robbery of 10 tractors, 12 trolleys and one motorcycle,” Patel added.