The Stoneman Murders - India’s Most Disturbing Unsolved Serial Killer Case

0:06 The Stoneman's Reign of Terror Begins in Calcutta June 4th, 1989, just before dawn, it's quiet in central Calcutta, known as Kolkata nowadays. Calcutta is the capital city of the Indian state of West Bengal and the largest city in the region. BBD Barg is the city's administrative and financial heart, and the district around it is usually crowded with office workers and St vendors. 0:27 In the daytime, the roads are swarming with people and traffic, but at this hour the streets are dark and practically empty. But that doesn't mean that nobody's there. For thousands of people in Calcutta, these streets are their homes. Some are migrant labourers, others are beggars or Drifters. 0:45 Many are what newspapers at the time call hawkers, people who make a very small living selling items on the streets like clothes or cigarettes. These people have nothing but cardboard boxes or thin sheets of plastic to protect them from the elements as they sleep. They operate on the margins of society. 1:02 Most people ignore them or don't even notice them in the first place. Among them is Alea Bibi, a woman in her mid 30s. She sleeps beside her husband Mohan Sao, who sells Knick knacks for a living, which she sometimes helps out with. The two of them had come to Calcutta from the city of Darbunga in the state of Bihar a few years earlier in search of better work and a better life. 1:25 But like so many others, they never found it. Instead, they spent their days and nights on the streets, surviving hand to mouth. Alea had gone to sleep at around 11:00, but sometime before dawn, someone silently approached her in the darkness and without warning, without a struggle, they delivered a single blow and killed her. 1:46 It took literally one second, made one dull sound, and everyone sleeping nearby, including her husband, slept right through it. Hours later, as the first light spreads across the city, a call comes into the nearby Hare Street police station. 2:03 A body has been discovered near the southwestern corner of BBD Bagh, just a short distance from Lalbazaar, the headquarters of the entire Calcutta Police Department. When officers arrive at the scene, they find her lying on the pavement with the right side of her skull completely crushed. 2:18 Beside her body lies a heavy stone stained A blackish red with blood. Investigators estimate it weighs just over 9 kilos. The blow was so severe and the stone so heavy that no forensics are needed to confirm what had happened. The stone had clearly been brought down on her head from extremely close range. 2:36 There are no other injuries on her body. There are no obvious signs of a struggle. There is no indication that she had been sexually assaulted. Her autopsy places her time of death between 4:00 and 4:30 in the morning and also reveals that it had been immediate upon impact. 2:51 But there's another detail the autopsy uncovers that makes the case even more tragic. Alea was three months pregnant when she was killed. The Homicide Branch detectives struggle to understand why anyone would want to kill Alea, or what they could possibly hope to gain from doing it. 3:06 Robbery makes no sense. Alea and Mohan owned almost nothing. There was simply nothing to be stolen from either of them. They briefly consider the idea that Mohan might be responsible for his wife's death. They try to find out if there was another man, or some sort of domestic tension or dispute, but according to everyone who knows the couple, there wasn't even the slightest hint of discord between Mohan and Alea. 3:29 She had no known conflicts within the community, no known enemies. The attack just seems completely random. A poor woman sleeping on a pavement had been killed with a stone, apparently for no reason at all. Without any witnesses or suspects, the investigation quickly stalls. 3:47 The case remains open, but there is very little for the detectives to actually work with, and for a few weeks it seems possible that the murder had simply been a random, disturbing act of violence. But then, on the night of July 19th, that idea completely collapses. 4:03 Because it isn't just another body that's discovered, it's two in two different locations. And just like a layer, both victims are St dwellers with nothing to steal, both are killed in the early hours of the morning, and both are killed with blows to the head from large stones left at the scene. 4:20 Within hours, detectives at Lalbazaar begin to realise that something far more disturbing may be unfolding in the city. Someone is targeting people sleeping on the streets. They have themselves a serial killer. The Calcutta police had investigated multiple murders before, but this case is something different for them. 4:38 They have never encountered a killer who appears to choose his victim so randomly and leaves almost no evidence behind. The murders trigger alarm inside Lalbazaar as they try and work out how they can possibly catch the killer with so little to go off, and how they can prevent further attacks. 4:53 Because there are thousands of people sleeping on the city streets every single night, and all of them are now at risk. And as more and more and more victims are discovered over the following weeks and months, a name will begin to spread through Calcutta's newspapers, its markets, its streets, and even through Lalbazaar itself. 5:11 The Stoneman But as investigators struggle to understand who might be responsible, another unsettling possibility begins to surface. Because just a few years earlier, in another Indian city hundreds of miles away, a series of murders had taken place under eerily similar circumstances. 5:29 The victims had all been homeless people sleeping on the streets. Their skulls had all been crushed with heavy stones. And just like the crimes now unfolding in Calcutta, their killer had never been identified. This is the story of the Stoneman. 5:58 Unsolved Murders: The Original Stone Killer in Bombay Several years before the killings in Calcutta, another Indian city had faced a similar and equally baffling series of murders in the 1980s. Mumbai, which was called Bombay back then, was already one of the largest and most densely populated cities in the world. Millions of people lived there, drawn by the promise of work and opportunity. 6:18 But for many who arrived there from poorer regions, that promise quickly evaporated. The city's population was exploding, and affordable housing and jobs were scarce. So just like in Calcutta, Bombay had a huge population of pavement dwellers. Entire families lived, worked and slept on the streets. 6:36 In many parts of the city, it was normal to see rows of people lying side by side along the pavements after midnight. But even when people slept in small groups like that, they essentially had little to no protection from crime or violence. It was a way of life that was extremely vulnerable. 6:52 And then in 1985, something disturbing began to happen on those pavements. On the morning of June 15th, at around 7, AMA crowd began gathering near Gandhi Market at King's Circle as more and more people on their way to work stopped to find out what everyone was looking at. 7:09 A pavement dweller had been brutally murdered. His skull had been crushed with a heavy stone so severely that his face was completely disfigured, making it impossible to identify him. Nearby, a large blood stained stone lay on the ground. According to witnesses, a woman sleeping nearby had woken up shortly before dawn and discovered the grisly scene screaming out as other pavement dwellers rushed over. 7:32 At first, the case attracted little attention. Violence against the homeless was not uncommon in large cities and the victim had no identification or family who came forward to claim his body. Police initially assumed it may have been a robbery or dispute that had turned violent. 7:48 The case remained unsolved and life in Bombay continued as usual. But then it happened again, and then again, and again. The first few cases occurred in the central suburbs of the city, particularly around areas like Cyan and King's Circle. 8:04 The victims were all pavement dwellers who had few personal connections to investigate and had nothing of value to be stolen. In most cases, the victims had been sleeping alone or slightly apart from larger groups. Each of them had had their skulls crushed by a large stone or a slab of concrete that was left beside their body at the scene. 8:23 The stones themselves were often extremely heavy. Some weighed more than 30 kilogrammes, meaning whoever was doing this had to be not only strong enough to lift them, but to bring them down with lethal force. Post mortem examinations suggested the killer was striking during the late hours of the night, typically sometime between 11:00 PM and 4:00 AM. 8:42 For the first few murders, police treated each case as an isolated killing, but after the 6th victim, investigators finally realised they were dealing with a single offender using the same method each time. There were never any signs of struggle. No witnesses ever saw the attacker clearly and none of the stones had recoverable fingerprints on them, potentially due to their rough surfaces. 9:02 The streets were constantly exposed to traffic and the elements, destroying footprints or other potential forensic evidence. Sniffer dogs were brought to several crime scenes, but couldn't pick up a useful trail. There simply wasn't much the detectives could gather with the tools and knowledge they had at the time. 9:18 It just seemed like someone was moving through the streets at night, silently approaching victims and crushing their skulls before vanishing back into the darkness. Newspapers soon began referring to the killer as Pathamar, which roughly translates to the Stone Killer. 9:40 As the number of victims grew, fear began to understandably spread. Streets that were normally busy late into the night emptied early. People who usually went out for early morning walks stopped venturing outside before sunrise. Among the pavement dwellers themselves, the fear was even more immediate. 9:57 Those who'd previously slept alone began gathering into larger groups, while others took turns staying awake through the night to keep watch for suspicious strangers. But despite these precautions, the killings continued. Over the course of roughly 2 years, at least 12 people were murdered in the exact same brutal manner, though it's been rumoured that there were actually upwards of 25 victims, but that the Bombay police kept the true number low to try and salvage their own reputation. 10:25 Most of the victims were never identified. Many of them had arrived from other states without family or documents or anything to help investigators figure out who they were. In one instance, an intended victim actually survived an attack. A pavement dweller named Sushil, who worked as a waiter in a small restaurant, later told police that he woke up in the middle of the night after feeling someone standing over him. 10:48 When he opened his eyes, he briefly saw a man raising a large stone above his head. The attacker hurled the stone downwards, but Sushil managed to move just enough for the rock to strike the side of his head instead of crushing his skull. His scream woke the other pavement dwellers nearby, causing the attacker to immediately flee. 11:06 Unfortunately, the area's streetlights were not working that night, and Sushil was unable to see the man clearly enough to describe him. According to the Bombay police, they explored a wide range of theories. Some investigators believe the killer must have been mentally unstable and driven by violent impulses they couldn't control. 11:24 Others suggested they might have been motivated by a hatred towards the homeless, or by some sort of personal grievance or ideological issue with them. I would personally imagine it's more likely that the homeless were targeted for the same reason serial killers target vulnerable people all over the world. 11:40 Their deaths don't receive the same level of attention, investigators don't take them as seriously, and it's tragically far easier to kill people who are already invisible. Some even speculated that the killings might have been linked to occult practises or ritualistic beliefs, though no evidence was ever uncovered to back this idea up. 11:59 Another rumour among some investigators and locals at the time was that the killer might be a police officer or constable. The theory suggested that someone within the police force would have had the knowledge needed to avoid patrols and investigative traps, allowing them to remain one step ahead of the investigation. 12:15 But like many of the other theories surrounding the case, there was never any evidence to prove it. There was never really any evidence of anything. At one point, investigators focused their attention on a night shift taxi driver named Mohammed. Because he drove around the city late at night and seemed to very specifically stare at pavement dwellers. 12:33 They quickly grew suspicious of him. Officers briefly considered whether he might have been transporting stones in his vehicle and then using them to carry out the attacks, but the suspicion turned out to be misplaced. The taxi driver was only staring at groups of pavement dwellers because he was actually working as a police informant, helping officers keep watch on the streets. 12:52 During the investigation, other Drifters and petty criminals were detained and interrogated, and other informants were asked to keep watching neighbourhoods where large numbers of homeless people slept. The police carried out patrols through these same areas. Officers questioned beggars, labourers and night Watchmen, hoping someone might have seen something suspicious. 13:12 But the city was big and crowded, and none of these lines of inquiry ever LED anywhere. Then, just as suddenly as the murders had begun, they stopped. And after months passed without another killing, the investigation gradually lost momentum. 13:27 The case remained open, but with no suspects and no new leads, it eventually began to fade from the public's attention. But for investigators who had worked the case, one question lingered. If the killer hadn't been caught, then where had he gone? 13:43 No one could answer that, at least not until 1989 when another pavement dweller was found dead beside a blood stained stone in the city of Calcutta. And the nightmare began all over again. 14:01 Police Under Pressure: Stoneman Phobia Grips Calcutta When Alea was killed on June 4th, 1989 in Calcutta, detectives didn't make any connection to the previous string of murders in Bombay. The killing was disturbing, but in the 1980s, Greater Calcutta was a sprawling metropolis of nearly 10 million people. 14:16 Some degree of violent crime was just inevitable, and with no suspects or obvious motive, the case quickly went cold. But then, on the morning of July 19th, everything changed. At around 6:00 in the morning, passersby stumbled across a body near the Park Street metro station. 14:34 The victim was a man in his 40s, dressed in a tattered shirt and trousers, who was thin and clearly malnourished. He was another St dweller. Just like in a layers case, the right side of his head had been practically caved in and once again the blood covered stone used to kill him was left right next to his body. 14:52 This time it was found to weigh nearly 20 kilos. The area was less than two miles from where a Leia's body had been found and was one of the busiest parts of the city, surrounded by offices and major roads and even close to several police stations. Officers from the homicide branch had barely begun organising the crime scene photography and forensic examination when another message arrived from the police control room. 15:16 A second body had been discovered around 3 miles away, next to the subway entrance to the sealed railway station. Sealed station was one of the busiest transport hubs in the city. It served thousands of commuters every day and was surrounded by crowded markets and shops. The victim was a teenage boy, estimated to be around 14 or 15 years old. 15:36 From the little police could gather immediately, he'd been living and begging on the station footpath. He had also been killed by a single crushing blow from a large stone which had also been left beside his body. The murders were immediately connected. It seemed far too coincidental that two pavement dwellers had been killed in the exact same way on the exact same night. 15:56 And now, looking back at the murder of a layer from June, it was clear that they were not dealing with an isolated act of violence, but something much, much more disturbing. Somewhere in the city, there was a killer moving through the streets at night, targeting people who were sleeping on the pavements. 16:12 Later that morning, police chief Prasan Mukherjee summoned an emergency meeting at Lalbazaar present with a deputy commissioner of the detective department Rajpal Singh, officers from the homicide squad and the officers in charge of the three police stations close to each of the murders, Hare St, Tautala and Muchapara. 16:29 The meeting was tense. Mukherjee went through the murders 1 by 1, intensely questioning every officer involved in the cases. But it quickly became apparent that there were no leads, no witnesses and no suspects. But there was also no denying that the three cases were practically identical, or that they perfectly mirrored the unsolved murders from Bombay that had ended around a year ago. 16:52 It was clear they were dealing with a serial killer, one who had potentially already perfected his methods. Over in Bombay, the victims themselves also didn't provide any avenues to explore. They had already looked into every connection Alea had and found nothing. The two new victims were unable to be identified at all, and as a result there were no obvious connections to be traced. 17:14 No disputes or conflicts with anyone were uncovered and there was nothing connecting any of them to each other either. As well as identifying whoever had done this, the other issue for the police was trying to work out how they could possibly hope to protect the thousands upon thousands of pavement dwellers on the streets. 17:31 All three of the murders had taken place in some of the busiest and most heavily populated parts of the city, and all of them had occurred not only extremely close to other sleeping St dwellers, but to police stations. Yet somehow the killer had struck completely unnoticed. Still, the police had little choice but to try and draw up a plan. 17:49 First, they activated their network of informants, assigning them to watch different areas of the city at night. These sources were given maps with locations marked, where large numbers of pavement dwellers gathered after dark, and they were ordered to report anyone they saw behaving unusually around those areas. 18:05 Second, the police significantly expanded their own night patrols. They deployed officers in vehicles, on foot and on bicycles, and every police station in the city was made to participate, sending officers to the central districts where the murders had taken place. Finally, senior officers themselves were ordered to take turns supervising the operations during the night to ensure that the patrols were always active and coordinated. 18:29 But even with all of these new measures in place, a few weeks later, on August 27th, another pavement dweller was found dead, once again near sealed our station. The body was discovered on the path leading from the station fly over towards the subway entrance. The victim, A beggar believed to be in his mid 30s, had once again been struck on the head with a heavy stone while he slept on the street. 18:51 And after that discovery, the media began reporting far more aggressively on the case, with newspapers publishing detailed reports about the mysterious attacker targeting the city's most vulnerable. And this is also when they began using the nickname that would become synonymous with the case. 19:06 In Bombay, the killer had been known as Pathamar the Stone Killer, but here English language papers refined the nickname in two The Stone Man. 19:22 The label stuck immediately, and within days the murders had become one of the most widely discussed topics in the city. But the reaction from the public was complicated. Among the middle and upper classes, the killings produced a sort of strange mixture of curiosity and detachment. 19:38 Many people believed they had nothing to fear, since the victims were all pavement dwellers. There was a common sentiment at the time that if you had a roof over your head, you were safe. That this was terrifying, sure, but it was happening to them, not us. It's even been claimed that some people genuinely supported the murders, believing that they were the work of a vigilante who was cleaning up the streets. 20:02 Newspapers began publishing critical commentary questioning both the police investigation and the broader social indifference towards the victims. Several editorials pointed out that the people being killed were still human beings, even if they lived on the streets and their names were unknown. 20:18 At the same time, the pressure on the police intensified. Headlines questioned the department's competency in disbelief that a killer could continue striking in the heart of the city with so many police patrols without being caught. While the press criticism was pretty harsh, even the police didn't see it as entirely unfair. 20:35 They really hadn't been able to find a single witness or fingerprint or any sort of forensic evidence. They just seemed to have nothing but bodies and stones. Deputy Commissioner Singh began attempting to construct a psychological profile of the attacker. 20:50 In his view, the killer was likely methodical and intelligent and had to be physically strong enough to lift the heavy stones used in the attacks. He also had to be capable of blending easily into the crowds that filled the city streets at night. He believed the murders were most likely driven by a deep seated hostility toward the pavement dwellers who populated the area. 21:10 But for those sleeping on the city streets, the reason he was doing it was almost irrelevant. It didn't change how increasingly terrified they were becoming. Many of them had already lived difficult and dangerous lives, but the idea that someone was deliberately hunting them while they slept created an entirely new kind of fear. 21:28 Many pavement dwellers began gathering in large groups and organising night watches for protection, just like they'd done previously in Bombay. One group would sleep from around 10 at night until 2:00 in the morning, while another would stay awake talking and playing cards. Then they would switch. 21:44 But even these precautions offered little reassurance. The killer had struck repeatedly without being seen. No one could say exactly when he arrived or how he left the crime scenes. And because most of the victims had been asleep when they were attacked, there were no witnesses who could describe what had happened or what he looked like. 22:01 This led to the terrified pavement dwellers accusing any stranger they saw nearby. On the streets at night, frightened groups began confronting and attacking anyone they believed might be the killer. Some men were captured, tied to lampposts and beaten bloody as mobs demanded to know if they were the Stone Man. 22:18 In many cases, the police had to intervene to stop these altercations from turning into literal public lynchings. Rescuing individuals who'd been wrongly accused and violently assaulted became an almost nightly occurrence for the officers patrolling the streets. The atmosphere in the city was becoming increasingly tense, and yet somehow the killings only seem to escalate. 22:39 During the first half of September, three more murders were reported in rapid succession. On September 6th, a body was discovered on the northern pavement leading to the Howrah Bridge, the massive crossing that connects Calcutta to the city of Howrah, across the Hooghly River, which was less than a mile from Lalbazaar. 22:57 The victim was believed to be a drifter, around 35 years old. The left side of his head had been crushed with a stone weighing close to 20 kilos. Just two days later, another victim was discovered with the same injuries. This time, the body was found on Old Courthouse St, which was even closer to Lalbazaar, less than a couple minutes walk away. 23:18 It was almost as if the killer was mocking the police, purposefully committing murders right outside their own headquarters. Then, three days after that, a 7th victim was found. This time he was able to be identified as Tega Rye, a young milk delivery worker. 23:33 He'd been sleeping on Baithakana Road, not far from Sealed A station again and was attacked at around 3:00 in the morning. But unlike the first six victims, Tiger was still alive when he was discovered. His vest was soaked with blood from the massive head wound that had been inflicted by the stone, and he was barely conscious. 23:51 He was rushed to Calcutta Medical College Hospital, and for the first time, the police were hopeful that they might finally be able to get a description of their killer. But despite the doctor's best efforts, Tiger never regained consciousness and he died 48 hours later. 24:11 With the death of Tiger 7, almost identical murders had now taken place. In just over three months, the entire city was gripped by what the newspapers began calling Stoneman phobia. Rumours spread that the killings were actually the work of a large group working together. 24:27 Others claimed that a cult was behind the murders and that it was all part of some sort of twisted ritual. For the Calcutta police themselves, the situation was unprecedented. They had long enjoyed a national reputation for solving complex cases. They were even known as the Scotland Yard of the East. 24:45 But here they were confronting a killer who had struck repeatedly in the centre of the city, often within walking distance of their police stations. And they had literally nothing, not even a single lead or clue. The case was no longer just being discussed in newspapers. It made its way into the West Bengal state assembly and eventually even into the Indian parliament. 25:06 International media also began to take notice. Publications like the Guardian in the UK published short articles on India's unsolved Stoneman killings. As police significantly expanded their patrols, detectives were made to work long hours, often patrolling the streets at night before returning to their desks during the day to review case files and interview witnesses. 25:26 They even brought in the government railway police to help provide surveillance at the major railway stations, particularly Howrah and Seilda. This was in case the killer was using the railway network to move in and out of the city unnoticed. Some officers became so desperate to catch the killer that they even began trying out unusual and dangerous strategies. 25:45 One officer later recalled encountering a suspicious man alone at night during a patrol near Seilda station. The man was lying on the pavement with his head covered by a sheet, peering cautiously at people passing nearby. When the officer approached him and pulled off the sheet, he shone his flashlight in his face, only to realise that he was looking at the officer in charge of the Muchipara police station. 26:06 The senior officer had decided to lie down among the pavement dwellers himself, pretending to sleep in the hope that the stone man might approach him. And he was not alone. Other officers had begun doing the same thing in different parts of the city, positioning themselves among groups of sleeping pavement dwellers and waiting silently for hours in the darkness, hoping the killer might reveal himself. 26:27 At the same time, police began conducting large scale sweeps of areas where homeless people slept. Hundreds of people were detained and questioned in connection with the murders. Most of these individuals were released within hours or days once it became clear they had nothing to do with the crimes. 26:43 Or at least there was nothing at all tying them to them. These aggressive tactics soon drew criticism. Human rights groups began protesting the police operations, accusing officers of rounding up defenceless St people and beating or torturing unlikely suspects who could not possibly have been responsible for the murders. 27:01 Within Lalbazaar itself, disagreements also started to emerge about who they were even looking for. Police chief Mukherjee and Deputy Commissioner Singh had developed sharply different ideas about the killer and how to catch him. Singh continued refining his psychological profile, convinced the attacker was a calculating predator who moved carefully through the city at night. 27:21 Mukherjee, however, believed another possibility could not be ruled out that the murders might be connected to tantric rituals involving human sacrifice. Some investigators pointed out that many of the killings had occurred on either Tuesday or Saturday nights, which are traditionally associated with worship of the goddess Khali, a powerful figure in Tantric traditions. 27:40 While there was never any evidence linking the murders to such rituals, the idea gained traction among many officers during the investigation, including the police chief. This created a bit of a divide within the investigation. Some officers were searching for Singh's calculating predator. 27:55 Others were looking out for a fanatic carrying out some kind of ritual sacrifice. 27:59 Interrogating Dunya Malik, The "Lord of the World" Suspect Either way, nobody seemed to fit either of these profiles, at least not until one night towards the end of September, when officers spotted a suspicious looking man walking alone along barepin Bahari Ganguly Street near Sealedar Station. He was thin and unkempt and appeared to be a vagrant somewhere close to 50 years old. 28:18 His movements were slow and he didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular, just wondering. So the officers approached him and asked him to identify himself. He calmly told them that his name was Dunya Malik, which translated roughly as the Lord of the World. 28:41 The officers pushed the suspicious man to stop messing around and give them his real name. So he told them that his birth name was Muhammad Ekram if that's what they wanted to hear, but that his real name was Dunya Malik. When asked where he lived, he responded that the whole world was his home. Losing patience, they pushed further, asking where he sleeps at night. 29:00 Again, he gave a bizarre answer. He said, I don't sleep, Sir. I roam around the pavements. There are so many people in the Lord of the World's domain without a roof over their heads. I roam around and see them. All the officers looked at each other, growing increasingly uncomfortable. 29:17 Then one of them finally responded. You see them all, he said slowly. And then you kill them with stones, According to the officers. Eckram didn't react with anger or fear at the accusation. Instead, he gave them a calm, almost philosophical reply. 29:34 He said I am the Lord of the world, why would I kill, Sir? But look at the people who spend their nights on the pavements. Is this kind of life worth living, Sir? At that point, the officers made their decision. It was as close to a motive or confession as anything they'd gotten so far, So they placed him in their patrol car and brought him to Lal Bazaar for questioning. 29:56 Throughout his proceeding interrogation, Ekram continued to give strange answers to every question he was asked. At times, he seemed incoherent, drifting into rants about power and destiny. At other moments, he spoke quite normally, answering questions about his past with surprising clarity. 30:13 Gradually, he revealed that he had originally come from Sitamahi, a district in the state of Bihar. Nearly 25 years earlier, he'd arrived in Calcutta with his father, Mohammed Isha, who worked as a labourer. After his father's death, Ekram had drifted across the city, moving from place to place and surviving largely on the streets, relying on occasional handouts or small, odd jobs. 30:36 To the investigators, the possibility that the killer might be someone who already lived on the streets made a certain kind of sense. Such a person would understand the habits of other pavement dwellers. He'd know where they slept and where he would be unlikely to be seen or disturbed. He'd even be able to move through the streets without attracting any real attention if he was already known to other vagrants. 30:57 Although it seemed clear to the detectives that he was likely suffering from some sort of mental illness, it also seemed clear to them that he was the first strong suspect they'd come across in the investigation. Talking to other vagrants, they learnt that Ekram was often seen walking through the city at night by himself, and he'd regularly been seen lingering near groups of sleeping pavement dwellers, watching them silently. 31:17 This seemed to perfectly fit the sort of behaviour they imagined their killer might display. Later that day, Deputy Commissioner Singh met with Police Chief Mukherjee to discuss the situation. Ekram had not confessed to anything, but his behaviour was undoubtedly strange and the Lord of the world name he'd given himself suggested a grandiose sense of power and control. 31:39 Some of the investigators believe that could align with the mindset of a killer who attacked the helpless while they slept. But there was a major problem. Ekram was extremely frail and thin. Many of the stones used in the murders weighed upwards of 20 kilos, and Ekram just didn't look like he would be physically capable of lifting them and carrying out the attacks. 31:58 Singh openly doubted that Ekram was the stone man, but Mukherjee decided that he should remain in custody regardless so they could learn more about his mental state. A psychological evaluation was arranged, and he continued to undergo questioning in the hopes that he might eventually reveal something incriminating or even confess. 32:16 And if he was truly the Stone Man, Mukherjee argued, then it wouldn't be long before they'd have their answer. Because if he was in custody and he was the killer, then the murders would soon stop. And if they didn't, then they'd know they had the wrong man. A few days passed without another body being discovered. 32:33 Then a couple of weeks for the detectives who'd been struggling for months to make progress in the case. It finally seemed like they might be on to something. But that optimism didn't last. 32:50 New Evidence Emerges, The Stoneman Remains Elusive In the early hours of October 19th, a call came into Lal Bazaar stating that the body of another pavement dweller had been found in the same area as the others, this time near our Armour Dental College, close to an electrical transformer. Like all the previous victims, his skull had been crushed by a heavy stone while he slept. 33:07 Some detectives believed that Ekram could still somehow be involved, proposing that he might be part of a group carrying out the murders. But for most, it seemed clear that the man who called himself Lord of the World was strange and unstable, but not the stone man. So after weeks of being held and interrogated, Ekram was eventually released without charge. 33:27 The real killer was still out there and despite the intense police presence at night, he was still managing to murder right under their noses. To many officers it felt like they were trying to catch a ghost. A month later, on November 26th, the body of another pavement dweller was discovered near the sealed off fly over subway close to Neil Rattan Sirkar Hospital. 33:47 The victim was a man in his 40s, and once again there was no evidence, no witnesses, nothing. And then the killing seemed to stop, with no explanation or reason the detectives could determine. No further victims were discovered for two whole months anyway, because then on January 29th, 1990, the stone man struck again. 34:08 The 10th victim was one of the rare few to ever be identified. Her name was Shanti Mana and she was around 35 years old. Her body was discovered on the pavement of Prafula Sarkar St, which was not only a short walk from Lal Bazaar again, but it was actually right outside the offices of one of the local newspapers, Ananda Bazaar Patrika. 34:27 Inquiries revealed that Shanti was a sex worker whose husband had died sometime earlier. She spent most of her nights working and sleeping on the pavements. Like the others, her skull had been crushed with a large stone. By that point, many police officers had given up hopes of ever catching the Stone Man. 34:45 The tone of conversations apparently shifted in some of the local departments from how to identify the killer to where the next body would turn up. Some officers even began turning to superstition for answers. 1 senior investigator was said to have consulted an astrologer in the hopes of learning how the killer operated and when the killings would come to an end. 35:05 The astrologer reportedly declared that the Stone Man had a long, strange stride, which he likened to a wading bird, and claimed that his capture was imminent. This information was taken as gospel by some of the officers, and while that's pretty wild to think about, they didn't exactly have anything else to focus on. 35:22 According to one officer, one of his inspectors became convinced he'd spotted the stone man near the High Court simply because he walked in an odd bird like way. The man was arrested on that single observation, but he was determined to just be a harmless hardware store owner and was soon released with an apology and a cup of tea. 35:41 The 11th murder came exactly 21 days after Shanty's body was found. Up until that point, the Stone Man's killings had all been confined to the same general areas in central Calcutta and that was where the vast majority of police patrols have been taking place. Not that they seem to have made any difference, but on February 20th the next victim was discovered in South Calcutta on a main road near the Beckbagan Crossing. 36:05 He was known locally as Mastan and was a beggar in his late 30s. As usual, his head had been caved in with a heavy stone left at the scene. But for the first time in the entire case, the stone man actually left something else behind at the scene, this time. 36:20 Footprints. The stone used in the attack was found about four yards from the body in a sewer. As far as detectives could tell, the killer appeared to have moved the stone after the murder for reasons unknown, and in doing so, he stepped in the victim's blood, leaving 3 shoe prints from his left foot and 9 from his right. 36:39 Experts rushed to collect what they could. While the left prints were too blurred and distorted to be useful, the right prints were intact enough to finally offer a few clues. First, experts were able to determine that the prints likely belonged to someone who was of medium build and not especially tall or broad based on the shoe size, print depth, and stride length. 36:59 Second, they revealed that the suspect had an exceptionally long big toe on his right foot. If these conclusions were correct, they implied that the Stone Man might not be as big and powerfully built as some of the investigators had suspected. While in reality these findings didn't have much practical use, they did at least give detectives something to compare potential suspects to. 37:19 In particular, the exceptionally long big toe on the right foot was something they would be able to look for on anyone they detained moving forwards. Somewhat strangely, this detail did potentially align with the astrologer's claims about the killer having an unusual walk. But regardless, before the police had any chance to make much use of this new information, the Stone Man struck again. 37:41 The Last Murder and Calipada Das's Wrongful Arrest Five days after Mastan's body was found, on February 26th, another body was discovered, once again close to sealed our station. This time, the victim was a boy of 15 or 16 who'd been surviving by begging and sleeping on the station premises. 37:56 It was the 12th murder committed by the Stone Man in Calcutta and it would also be the last. In the first week of March, just as pressure on the state government and the Calcutta police was reaching its peak, a message crackled over the police wireless network late one night. 38:16 Stone man caught red handed near Silda being brought to Lalbazaar. Within minutes, detectives and senior officers began rushing to the police headquarters, shocked that the killer may have finally been caught. The man brought in for questioning didn't look like the terrifying figure many had imagined. 38:33 He was nearly 50 years old, of medium build, calm and even slightly bewildered by what was going on. He told them that his name was Calipada Das and he worked for the state government in the Department of Sports and Youth Welfare. His posting was in the Bankura district, several hours away from Calcutta. 38:51 But according to the patrol officers that had detained him near Baithakana Market, he'd been found lying beside a woman sleeping on the pavement, raising a stone above her head, seemingly about to strike her. As far as the officers were concerned, they had caught the stone man in the act. But almost immediately, small details raised doubts for the detectives. 39:10 The weapon recovered was not a heavy stone like those used in the murders. It was just a simple brick, the kind that might cause injury, but not the kind that had crushed the skulls of 12 victims. And the man himself insisted that he'd done nothing wrong. He told the investigators he'd travelled to Calcutta to attend a political meeting near Seal Dust Station. 39:29 When the event ended, train services were delayed because of a mechanical problem, leaving him stranded overnight. With nowhere else to go, he decided to sleep on the pavement like many others nearby. According to his account, the woman beside him had suddenly woken up and started crying out in fear when she noticed a stranger lying next to her. 39:48 Embarrassed and annoyed, he picked up a nearby brick and threatened her with it, hoping to scare her into silence. When detectives returned to the scene to investigate, witnesses supported his story. The woman was quickly identified as a deaf and mute pavement dweller who'd been startled when she woke and saw him lying beside her. 40:05 Police also confirmed that a political gathering had taken place outside sealed dust station that evening and that train services had been disrupted for several hours. And further inquiries revealed another crucial detail. Calipada had a history of mental instability. 40:20 At times he behaved completely normally, but at others he drifted into strange fantasies, imagining himself to be a soldier in the army of Subhas Chandra Bose during the Second World War. When investigators checked his work attendance records and travel history, the results were conclusive. 40:36 On the dates of the murders, he had been either at home or at work, far from Calcutta. To eliminate any remaining doubt, police compared his footprints with the Prince discovered at the 11th murder scene. They didn't match, so Kalapada was dismissed as a suspect and released like everyone else before him. 40:54 He was not the stone man. 41:02 Copycat Killings and The Stoneman's Elusive Method Days passed, then weeks, then months, and no new victims were discovered. At first, police remained cautious. After all, the killings had never followed an obvious schedule. Sometimes multiple victims had been found within days, other times months had passed before another victim was discovered. 41:20 This made it seem like the Stone Man had not been acting impulsively or randomly, but instead had been watching the investigation unfold and the public response and adjusting his behaviour accordingly. Perhaps when patrols had been too intense, he'd waited for them to relax, and when police finally felt like they were regaining some sense of control over the situation, he would murder right on their own doorstep to show who was truly the one controlling things. 41:45 If any of this was true, it could have just meant that the Stone Man was patiently waiting for the police and the public to relax before he struck again. But as more and more time passed without another attack, it eventually became apparent that something had changed. The Stone Man had vanished. 42:02 It was an almost exact replica of what had happened in Bombay back in 1985. A dozen people had been murdered with stones as they slept on the street at night, and then the killer had just disappeared, leaving no real evidence or clues behind. The similarities between the two cases were impossible to ignore, and the fact that the Bombay murders stopped in mid 1988 and the Calcutta murders began less than a year later in mid 1989 made the connection hard to dismiss. 42:30 But because of the complete lack of evidence, there was never any definitive proof that the same stone man was responsible for both series of murders, and it was entirely possible that a second serial killer in Calcutta had been inspired by the 1st in Bombay. After all, not only was the method used extremely easy to imitate, but anyone following the Bombay murder series would have seen how helpless and clueless the police were. 42:53 Eventually, life in Calcutta slowly began to return to normal. The police patrols that had once moved constantly through the city at night were gradually reduced. The emergency meetings inside La Bazaar became less frequent, and as time passed without another body appearing on the pavements, the sense of immediate danger began to fade. 43:13 No further evidence was discovered. No suspects were found who matched the prints taken from the 11th crime scene. The killings were seemingly over, but the mystery of who was responsible and why they had done it was not. And then, nearly a decade later, the stone man appeared to have returned yet again. 43:38 In 1999, police in the city of Behrampur in the eastern Indian state of Odisha began investigating a series of killings that immediately sounded familiar. One after another, pavement dwellers were being murdered in the middle of the night while they slept. And just like before, each victim had had their skull crushed with a large stone. 43:56 As the bodies began to accumulate, the resemblance to the now infamous killings of the 1980s quickly drew attention. Rumours spread that the stone man was back. But then something very different happened from the 1st 2 murder series. After six victims had been discovered, the killer was caught as he attempted to claim his seventh life, attacking A rickshaw puller with a large stone. 44:18 His name was Maheshwar Padi, and he was a local pawn shop owner. But while it might have seemed like the Stone Man had finally been found at long last, it was a little bit more complicated than that. Maheshwar was in his early 20s, which meant that when the original Stone Man murders were taking place in Bombay and Calcutta during the 80s, he was only a child. 44:38 It seemed that in reality, he was a copycat killer, modelling his crimes on the older unsolved murder cases. He denied any wrongdoing, but enough witnesses had seen him attacking the rickshaw puller that he was charged with attempted murder. He also failed a lie detector test, leading detectives to feel confident he was responsible for the other six murders, even if they didn't have enough evidence to charge him with them. 45:01 Maheshwar actually managed to escape custody by jumping out of a moving train while being moved between locations. But after a three month manhunt, he was eventually rearrested and he was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for the attempted murder that could be proven. The killings did stop after his arrest, but whether he was truly responsible for these six new murders was never able to be determined. 45:23 Over the following years, several more cases of stone Man style murder sprees appeared across India, and each time they did, the same questions returned. Had the original killer resurfaced or was it another copycat imitating his methods? One of the most alarming examples occurred in the northeastern city of Guwahati in 2009. 45:43 Once again, pavement dwellers were murdered while they slept by a heavy stone being dropped or slammed on their heads. The Stoneman label was applied almost immediately by the media, but after 11 people had been killed, Krishna Timon was arrested and openly confessed to being the serial killer. 46:01 He was only 22 years old, which again meant he could not have been responsible for the earlier Bombay and Calcutta cases. Krishna was a drug addict who'd been living around the city's railway station area. He had previously worked in a job that involved removing bodies from railway tracks and other accident scenes, which perhaps had allowed him to become disturbingly familiar with death. 46:22 Just a few years later, in 2013, another series of similar killings began in the western Indian city of Kolhapur in the state of Maharashtra. In less than four months, 10 people were murdered. And just like the earlier attacks, the victims were all people sleeping outdoors and were all killed in the same brutally simple way, a heavy stone brought down onto their heads while they slept. 46:45 Despite having more modern investigative tools in their arsenal, police struggled to identify the killer and as with all the other instances, rumours that the original stone man had returned ran rampant. Police employed a wide range of unusual tactics to catch the killer, including placing decoys and mannequins on pavements to try and lure him out. 47:04 Eventually, 35 year old Dilip Loharia was arrested and in custody. He supposedly confessed to the murders. However, it's worth pointing out that in this instance, the state's deputy minister for home, Satej Patil, who was from the city, had demanded results in the case. 47:20 He gave a deadline and threatened to transfer the city's police Superintendent if he failed to catch the killer by it. It was only after this threat that Dilip was miraculously caught despite not having had a single lead in the previous four months. And there are claims that he arrived to court badly bruised and beaten. 47:36 So whether he was truly the killer in this instance is again unclear. And while it's unlikely the original Stone Man was still active 3 decades later, it isn't impossible. There were also other incidents all over the country over the years. In Pune, several pavement dwellers were murdered in the same manner. 47:54 In Rajkot, another small cluster of Stone Man style killings occurred. Even in Calcutta or Kolkata, as it had become known, isolated cases occasionally appeared where a homeless victim was found with their skull crushed by a stone. Every time a similar case occurred, the name Stone Man returned. 48:12 But by then, most investigators had come to believe that these crimes were no longer the work of the serial killer who had evaded them all those years ago. Instead, they believed they were something that's almost more unsettling. It was like the original murders had created a blueprint, a method that required no money, no special weapon, no complicated planning and almost no risk of being traced. 48:34 Anyone could pick up a stone. Anyone could attack a sleeping victim. Ultimately, none of these new cases brought investigators any closer to identifying who the original Stone man was, if he was even 1 singular person. To this day, his identity remains unknown, and perhaps more tragically, so do the identities of the vast majority of his victims. 48:56 Most of them were people who had already slipped through the cracks of society long before they were killed. When they died, there were often few people left to speak for them, and that anonymity may have been the Stone Man's greatest advantage. For the detectives trying to solve the case all those years ago in Calcutta, one thing had never quite made sense to them. 49:15 How had the Stone Man been able to continue committing these murders so openly, despite the constant patrols and surveillance? Every night, officers were combing the streets. Informants were watching all the areas where pavement dwellers gathered. Groups of homeless people were sleeping in shifts, keeping watch for any strangers and even attacking anyone they saw walking alone. 49:35 So what if the killer wasn't finding a way to approach his victims? What if he was instead lying down right beside them, pretending to be asleep, pretending to be another anonymous, invisible person, and waiting. Waiting for the city to fall silent. 49:51 Waiting for the moment when everyone else was asleep and then, when the time was right, rising quietly from the darkness, lifting a stone and striking. If that theory was true, it would explain something that had puzzled investigators from the very beginning. 50:07 Why no one had ever seen the Stone Man coming, Because he was already there. And with that, our deep dive into the unsolved case of India's Stone Man comes to a close. 50:26 As always, thanks so much for watching. If you found this video interesting, don't forget to do all the little rituals the algorithm gods demand of you. Liking, commenting, hyping, subscribing and so on. If you like what I do and want to support my channel further, there's a membership option here on YouTube and a Patreon linked down below too. 50:46 I don't have a lot to offer if you join either of them beyond my unconditional thanks, but you do get to see your name at the end of my videos if you do, alongside all the lovely folks popping up on screen in a few seconds. So until next time, you have been watching The Mystery Abyss.