A Facebook post written by Sunil Wains about child serial killers who are mentioned by Tovino’s character in the movie Forensic is becoming viral on the social media. The note elaborately explains the case of Amarjeet Sada, the world's youngest serial killer. In a scene in the movie, Tovino speaks about Amarjeet Sada and many other child serial killers like Mary Bell and Robert Thompson to his colleagues.
“It was the year 2007; the phone at the Bhagavanpur police station in Bihar kept ringing continuously, which was quite unusual. The policemen who were engaged in their usual jobs wouldn’t have imagined that those phone calls would unravel one of strangest and gruesome mysteries of a serial killing spree. The phone calls came from a small hamlet in Bihar. The villagers informed the police that they have captured a ruthless murderer. They asked the police to come to the village to arrest the culprit. The police rushed to the village immediately. It was then that the world knew about the youngest serial killer in the country. The villagers had handed over an 8 year old boy named Amarjeet Sada (Amardeep Sada in some reports) as the murderer to the police. Even when he was taken away to the station, the young boy was staring, with an icy glare, at the police,” writes Sunil.
Amarjeet Sada was born in 1998 in the Begusarai district in Bihar. Later the family moved to Mushahari village. The family was extremely poor and had spent most days in poverty. Amarjeet’s father was a penniless farmer.
The police had initially rebuked the villagers, asking how such a young boy could commit a heinous crime. However, the policemen were shocked when they learned the truth from the villagers. They couldn’t believe that the ‘innocent’ looking young boy was behind a series of murders in the village. The boy was unperturbed when he explained how he had committed all the murders. The policemen looked petrified listening to Amarjeet confessing his crimes.
What shocked them the most was the fact that Amrjeet’s victim was a six month old baby girl. A woman named Chung Chung Devi had laid her sleeping daughter in a nearby primary school before returning home to do her chores. However, that mother couldn’t find her daughter Khushboo when she came back to the school. By then, Amarjeet had already strangled life out of little Khushboo’s fragile body. When the people of the locality caught him and questioned him, Amarjeet confessed without even showing an iota of remorse.
However, that was not the first time that he had committed murder. He confessed that he had earlier killed two more infants aged between 6 months and a year. Amarjeet was just 7 years old when he murdered for the first time. To the utter shock and panic of the villagers, Amarjeet admitted to killing his own sister who was just a year old. The baby was sleeping peacefully in her mother’s lap when her own brother had carried her to her death.
Amrjeet who carried the infant to a deserted field, returned home without her. When the family questioned him where the baby was, he took them to the field and showed them her dead body that was covered in grass and dried leaves. The murderer in him wasn’t tamed after that murder, as he found his next victim in his cousin.
All the family members were aware that it was Amarjeet who had committed the murders. However, they tried to save him by not revealing anything. This only helped in fanning the murderous instincts in Amarjeet. The villagers already had their doubts on Amarjeet and they were convinced after young Khushboo’s murder. The police took him to the station and asked him why he had committed such gruesome crimes. But all Amarjeet did was smile at the policemen. He told the police that he was hungry and that he wanted some biscuits. The police gave him biscuits and asked him how he killed the children. Amarjeet said that he took the kids to deserted fields and hit them hard on their faces using bricks until they weren’t breathing anymore. After making sure that they were dead, Amarjeet hid their bodies using grass and dried leaves.
Amarjeet had killed the three infants in similar ways. The police hadn’t heard of such an incident earlier. Many of them were even scared to look at his face. The police men decided to wait until a psychiatrist examined the young killer. Despite being a minor, Amarjeet’s real name and photos were intentionally published in the media. The police had taken such a precautionary step following the psychiatrist’s diagnosis that Amarjeet was a dangerous killer who had mental disorder.
The police informed the media that even though the killer was just 8 years old, the case would be investigated as a murder case. They added that even if his age was considered, Amarjeet’s mental state or motive wouldn’t give him any reprieve.
The doctors who treated Amarjeet diagnosed him as a sadist who found joy in hurting others. They said he was born with a mental disorder which motivates him to commit murders. However, they also opined that Amarjeet’s physical and mental illness could be cured completely through medication and therapies. They said it would be extremely dangerous to let him free before he is treated and cured, as he hasn’t acquired the ability to differentiate between right and wrong. The news reports about Amarjeet, lazily smiling at even the judge who indicted him, had garnered wide spread media attention.
Amarjeet was shifted to a juvenile home where he served his sentence. He was put in solitary confinement without any contacts with the other children in the juvenile home. The media hasn’t since then received any news about Amarjeet. He may have been released when he turned 18 years old and may be leading a normal life somewhere else. Or he may be committing similar crimes under a different name.
Mary Bell’s story too is somewhat similar to Amarjeet’s case. Mary Bell was born in 1957 as the daughter of a sex worker. Her own mother had tried to kill her a few times. She had endured abject poverty and an insecure childhood. It was the day before her 11th birthday that Mary held the hand of four year Martin Brown and walked into a deserted house in Newcastle, England.
She strangled the boy at that old dilapidated house. The police had no clue of Martin’s murderer in the first few days of investigation. Mary Bell, who reached a nursery school in the town with her friends, left a few notes confessing her as the murderer. But the police didn’t take those ‘declarations’ seriously.
This was in fact an encouragement for Mary who, after two months, killed three year old Bryan Howe. The police found Howe’s body at the exact spot where Martin Brown’s dead body was found. This became a major lead for the police in the investigation and they soon arrested Mary Bell. At the trial, the court ordered to provide the service of psychiatrists for Mary. After serving the 12 year jail term, Mary was released in 1980. Now, she is living a normal life adopting a different name.
Robert Thompson and John Veneble were close friends who became notorious in Britain for the ghastly crime that they committed when they were studying in class five. The duo had brutally murdered two year old James Bulger!
John and Robert used to regularly bunk classes at their school in Merseyside, England. On 12 February 1993, they reached a shopping complex in town. After stealing small objects from the shops there they began observing young children who had come to the shopping center. Suddenly they noticed little James Bulger who had accompanied his mother for shopping. They snatched James away from his mother in a moment when she had looked away. They walked hurriedly towards an old railway station in Anfield. Some people had spotted the boys walking with such a young child and questioned them. However, they replied that James was their younger brother and that they were taking him home. Thompson and Venebles began hurting the little boy near the cemetery closer to the railway station.
They struck Bulger on the face with paint tins and bricks before hitting him continuously using an iron rod that weighed ten kilos, until the infant died. They then removed his clothes and dumped the body on the railway tracks. They did this to mislead the police into thinking that the child had died getting hit by the train.
The police could find Bulger’s dead body only two days after the murder. The forensic experts who investigated the body reported that the kid was already dead before he was hit by the train. Robert Thompson was identified by one of his neighbors from the hazy CCTV visuals from the shopping complex. Soon, both of them were arrested for the murder of James Bulger.
Years later, Thompson and Venebles were released from the observation facility after serving their terms. Venebles violated his parole and indulged in criminal activities before getting arrested two more times. Thompson, meanwhile, adopted a new name and identity to lead a regular life.
Sunil Weins ends his lengthy Facebook post by naming few more child killers like Kiplant Kinkal, Joshua Philips, Barry Lukatis and Willie Bosmat.
