Psycho Nation

Yogesh Pratap Singh, a former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, makes light of the growing trend of brutal, heinous killings in India, attributed not to socio-economic deprivation but to US-style psychotic maladjustment, a phenomenon till now the preserve of the developed world.

"In a country of 121 crore people, teeming with social conflicts and enormous pressures of life, if a few out of the millions act this way, it is probably expected. In the US there are innumerable such incidents happening," Singh says.

Would this explain the psyche of Pune's Santosh Mane, 40, who hijacked a bus on January 25 this year, then mercilessly – and without provocation – proceeded to mow down eight innocents and grievously injured 28 others with a song on his lips?

Or that of 80-year-old Mohiniraj Kulkarni, a former Hindustan Antibiotics employee from Pune, who raped a 10-year-old, the daughter of his housemaid, and then strangulated her. Equally, why did a seemingly normal Chandrashekhar Ranavare kill his three children before taking his own life?

On January 23 this year, a 42-year-old electrical contractor, Arun Kashinath Palkar, allegedly killed his wife and two minor children by giving them sleeping pills and then committed suicide. The reason: a blind belief in astrology. In a suicide note, he attributed his actions to the collusion of Saturn and Mars!

These four killings, barbaric in their execution and demented in thought, are no exceptional cases confined to Pune, whose salubrious climate and quiet surroundings once made it a pensioners' paradise. They are slowly becoming the norm in a country which, post-globalisation, has developed an appetite for the most macabre killings, which on the face of it lack any motive.

According to one assessment, about one per cent of people in India suffer from schizophrenia, one per cent are hit by compulsive disorders and nearly four per cent from unipolar depression, which given the size and population of the country, works out to be a sizable number.

Consider the following:

• In January this year, a Delhi Police constable Riazuddin was beaten to death by the catering van staff of the Indian Railways when he stopped them from crossing the railway line.
• After celebrating their marriage anniversary, a physically handicapped Nitin murdered his wife and five-year-old child by strangulating them in Delhi's Rohini.
• In Ahmednagar this January, an educated 20-year-old man mercilessly axed his entire family, including his elder brother, mother and father. He then calmly committed suicide. This man was reportedly frustrated due to his own unemployment, in addition to family debts and a problem of alcoholism.

Says Chitra Khare, a clinical psychologist who specialises in treating severe mental cases, "There has been a spurt in mental illness cases not just in Pune but other cities as well. There are many instances of people without any criminal records resorting to things that are violent, gruesome and shocking. This could be because of dormant abnormality which suddenly comes to the surface."

Now sample this. According to latest figures released by the Delhi Police, 17 per cent murder cases registered by them in 2011 was without any motive or were a result of what they describe as 'sudden provocation'.

The police say the reasons for inflicting sheer bestiality upon unsuspecting victims were far from earthshaking and appeared decidedly trivial: fight over a street dog, dispute over purchasing curd, brawl over a wailing infant, use of colours during Holi, playing loud music, parking of vehicles, playing cricket and other such minor incidents.

Interestingly and without any surprise, the Delhi Police says that of the 797 accused involved in attempt to murder, 93 per cent had no criminal record.

Why? Explains Khare, "A changing lifestyle, competitive and performance-driven work environment, unreachable targets, extreme negative perceptions towards self and life, excessive dependence on social networking sites at the cost of personal contacts are giving rise to a lot of mental problems. We meet people who spend hours in the virtual world and on networking sites but who rarely seem to communicate with their near and dear ones in the next room."

To be sure, serial killers on the rampage are not a new phenomenon. In 2000, a psychopathic killer labelled the ‘stoneman’, had created panic in the south Odisha town of Berhampur. Later identified as Maheswar Padhi, 26, he was probably the youngest psychopathic serial killer ever in the country. He killed as many as seven people sleeping on the pavement by smashing their heads with a stone.

Again in Orissa in March 2008, a lunatic serial killer Bhagirathi Giri, accused of killing six women, was arrested by the police in Balasore. A police official said Giri used to lure minor girls from tribal-dominated regions with the promise of marriage. After going through the marriage ritual, he used to kill them.

Though Giri confessed to killing four such women, according to the police, he is suspected to have married 14 unsuspecting victims. He is suspected to have killed most of them.
Nor are such killings confined to the poor. Residents of Deogoan village of Bargarh district of Odisha were rudely woken up from their slumber on July 31, 2009, to find senior IAS officer Jagadananda Panda, 54, and his five family members lying in a pool of blood.

Although the local police have concluded it was Panda who shot five members of his family before taking his own life, the reasons behind the extreme step remain shrouded in mystery.

Panda, an IAS officer of the 1983 batch, was protocol-general of immigration in the overseas department of the ministry of external affairs (MEA). He had arrived in the village, about 300 km from Bhubaneswar, a couple of days before the bloodbath, along with wife, Surekha, and only son, Swapnesh, 22.

Depression was not ruled out as Panda's house had been raided by the CBI both in Delhi and Odisha as he was suspected of involvement in an immigration scam.
In a suicide note, Panda asserted he was innocent and lamented that he had been "betrayed by his simplicity''. He named no individual or agency that might have caused him distress; nor did he mention what it was exactly that he was running away from.

Deogoan villagers rushed six profusely bleeding members of the Panda family, the officer himself, his wife, son, octogenarian father and two middle-aged sisters, to a nursing home where the four were declared brought dead.

Panda, who was still alive, and his son were taken to the VSS Medical College Hospital in Burla, where the senior bureaucrat breathed his last.

While incidents like these have taken place from time to time, its growing spread in the last one year or so is what is causing concern. Take neighbouring Karnataka for instance.

• Psycho killer Jayashankar, who created panic in Tumkur and Davanagere districts of the state was arrested on May 6, 2011. He stands charged with committing more than 35 rapes and murders, of which 19 are reported from districts like Selam in Tamil Nadu and the rest are from Karnataka. He had escaped from police custody while being taken to Selam court from Coimbatore central jail on March 18, 2011. The 33-year-old psychopath belongs to the Selam district in Tamil Nadu. He had deliberately chosen smaller cites and district headquarters for his activities.
• A teacher-turned-serial killer Mohan Kumar, alias 'Cyanide Mohan', was arrested on October 21, 2009. The police has charged him with murdering 20 women. He lured his victims with marriage plans, had intercourse with them and killed them with cyanide tablets. Mohan is defending himself in the court.
• A former police constable-turned-serial-rapist Umesh Reddy was awarded capital punishment on February 18, 2009 in the Jayashree rape and murder case. On February 28, 2007, he tied and raped Jayashree before killing her in an apartment in Bangalore. The Supreme Court has upheld the judgment. He is accused in 23 cases including a murder and 15 rapes. Reddy was initially employed as a police constable. He had studied till pre-university and was appointed as constable with the District Armed Reserve of Chitradurga in 1996. Reddy has escaped from police custody several times.
• On May 28, 2009, 44-year-old Mallika, infamously known as 'Cyanide' Mallika', was awarded death sentence by a fast track court in Tumkur in Karnataka. She was held on December 31, 2007, for having murdered six women in the span of eight years. Posing as a religious mendicant, Mallika used to befriend middle-class women devotees frequenting the temples and gain their confidence by recommending rituals to overcome their ills. Once trust was gained, she took her victims to faraway places and give them food laced with cyanide. Then she would escape with the victim’s jewellery.

Experts believe that more comprehensive mechanisms are needed to deal with a trend that is different from run-of-the mill criminal activities that the police force and other busybodies are accustomed to.

The key question is how do you put potential perpetrators on the watch list, apart from identifying him or her? Should they be placed in innocuous positions so that deviations could be neutralised at the nick of time?

States former policeman Singh, "We can have free psychiatric treatment of vulnerable people. In advanced western nations, psychiatric treatment is very diverse, well-penetrated and there is no social taboo assigned, unlike in India."

He adds: "There is also need for a special legislation on the lines of the Lunacy Act, 1912, for those who may not be lunatic but need psychiatric supervision. This can be done without compromising the human rights of individuals. It is also necessary to replace the somewhat harsh nomenclature of the Lunatic Act with a more soothing Mental Care Act.'' Good point.

The story of bus driver Santosh Mane elucidates Singh's perspective. Why did he do what he did? Mane's own response after the killings was he had no memories of the hit and run.

His relatives now claim he had been under treatment for schizophrenia for some time after he lost his first wife, but decided to give it up halfway.

State transport authorities, on the other hand, say Mane was performing his duty normally till the impulse to kill and maim took over.

Obviously there is no mechanism in place that could have determined the state of Mane's mental and physical health.

And with the doctor who treated Mane clarifying that the accused was suffering from schizophrenia, how is that the transport administration were unaware of one of its employees suffering from such a serious mental and stress disorder and assigned him to such a critical function as ferrying packed buses from one point in the city to another?

Confirms Chitra Khare, "When people with severe mental disorders suddenly stop taking medicines, they tend to demonstrate violent behaviour. That is what seems to have happened in the case of the Pune bus driver."

These gory incidents raise chilling questions? Are their more such 'freaks' and 'weirdos' around us, who on the surface look and appear normal, but who at the slightest provocation can turn into killers? A scary thought.

There are those who blame inflation, rising inequalities and other economic ills for this deadly emerging trend. According to clinical psychologist Richa Bapat, "Rising stress levels in employment, reduced free time for self and family, and the need to do too many things at one go is adding to peoples' anxiety leading to depression. This also decreases their tolerance threshold and makes them go overboard in venting their aggressive emotions."

But poverty is not new in India. Clearly there are most who have the capacity to absorb these imbalances, but there are others who do not, particularly those whose access to sophisticated healthcare is non-existent.

Says Dr Vidyadhar Watawe, former president of Indian Psychiatrist Society, west zone, "The spurt in psychotic disorders is in a large part due to the increase in population, a decrease in employment avenues, and inadequate opportunities of quality education."

According to Dr Watawe, "Depression is increasing at an alarming rate around the world and by the year 2020 it is on the way to becoming the globe's second largest disorder next only to cardiovascular diseases."

His take on Mohiniraj Kulkarni, who raped and killed a ten-year-old girl: it is a possibility that Kulkarni could be suffering from satyriasis, the male equivalent of nymphomania, the hyper sexual disorder that is characterised by an uncontrollable sexual desire.

This mounting wave of social violence is finding its manifestation in many other ways, for instance in frequent attacks on children and, dangerously, that too reveals a rising curve.
Says Anuradha Sahasrabudhe, executive director, Childline Pune, a 24-hour helpline for children, "Cases of psychotic attacks on children are on the rise. What is terrible is that the atrocities, in most cases, are committed by their own close relatives. For example, we rescued a girl child whose own mother used to drive a nail in her head to punish her.''
Childline Pune started operations on March 26, 2001, with an average of 1,500 calls per month. Today, it receives almost 20,000 calls on an average or almost 86,128 calls a year, a whopping increase.

During mid-October, 2010, a call centre was set up in Mumbai. Calls are attended by Childline officials in Mumbai and then diverted to Pune. Sadly, says Sahasrabudhe, in many cases perpetrators escape the long arm of the law because parents coerce the child to turn hostile in the courts. In what can only be considered baffling, in many cases of sexual abuse by psychotic fathers, the mother goes out of the way to defend the fathers!

Experts also say that marital conflicts tend to take their toll on women and children. Couples who are unable to resolve their problems are prone to venting their anger on their women and children. Which is what appears to be happening in some of the goriest killings recorded in the past two years.

Social behaviourists in India would do well to take a close look and get to the bottom of what is essentially a deep psychotic crisis and one which clearly lacks any easy remedies.