Former doctor admits plotting to kill 50 taxi drivers
An Indian man who confessed to being the mastermind behind more than 50 murders has been caught by police after he tried to flee to another state while on parole.
Between 2002 to 2004, Devender Sharma was convicted of murdering seven taxi drivers and sentenced to life in prison in Jaipur, a city in the northern state of Rajasthan, CNN reports.
In 2008, local media reported he was caught by police in the middle of a killing.
After serving 16 years in jail, the 62-year-old was given 20 days of parole but did not return to prison when his time was up, according to Indian police.
Sharma, a former doctor of traditional Indian medicine, was arrested on Wednesday (local time) six months after he went missing.
Police found him in Delhi living with a widow he recently married.
When confronted by officers, Sharma admitted he had no plans to return to prison after his parole and confessed to grim details about his criminal past.
Beginning in 1984, Sharma ran a clinic at a hospital for 11 years, but after losing money in a scam, he began partaking in petty crime.
He began selling fake gas canisters, before moving taking part in more than 125 illegal kidney transplants, which earned him almost $9,350 for each transplant, according to CNN.
He was arrested in 2004 over the illegal transplants.
Police said Sharma also admitted to being behind the murders of more than 50 taxi drivers so he could sell their car parts, according to the publication.
Sharma said he worked with people in the Northern state of Uttar Pradesh to would hire taxis so they could murder the drivers and dumping their bodies into a canal infested with crocodiles.
“They used to dump bodies in Hazara Canal, Kashganj, which has crocodiles hence, there was no chance of retrieval of any body,” Deputy Paweriya told The Hindu.
After the murders, Sharma would sell the taxis or strip them for parts, making a few hundred dollars per car, according to police.
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