Devender Sharma was a practitioner of the traditional Indian medicine system of Ayurveda. But at some stage of his career, which began in 1984, in Rajasthan state's capital Jaipur, he decided to delve into the illegal trade of kidneys that often goes on unnoticed in India. But his involvement in this trade pales in comparison to his worst crimes.
Sharma became a serial killer and has admitted to killing more than 50 people, at least. The reason the police doesn't know how many people he actually killed is because the murderer himself admitted that he lost count of his victims after having put to death 50 of them. Shockingly, police in India believe the number could well be above 100.
Criminal Career
Sharma was arrested by police last Wednesday after having jumped his first parole in a life-imprisonment sentence for committing seven murders. Seven murders might seem a large figure. However, it was actually a failure when, in 2004, police could get him convicted on only seven counts of murder. They knew full well that he is responsible for many more.
Sharma first turned to illegal activity after being cheated of more than a million rupees in a fraud. In 1994, he got involved in the racket of illegal transplants of kidneys that went on in the area around the country's capital of Delhi. According to his own admission, the approximate number of kidney transplants, illegal ones, he carried out in a period of around 10 years, from 1994 to 2004, is 125.
Becoming a Serial Killer
But darker tendencies existed in Devender Sharma which would make him one of the worst criminals in the history of India. He became a serial killer who operated a criminal gang that developed a deadly plan of making money by targeting unsuspecting drivers.
His associates in the criminal endeavor used to hire taxis to travel to a town called Aligarh in northern India. At the right moment, when the taxi would be at an uninhabited and secluded place, they would murder the driver. The body would be disposed of in a canal located within the town of Kashganj which was infested with crocodiles. This was a sinister way of disposing of the bodies without leaving a trace.
The taxis would then be sold in the same town of Kashganj and the price for these vehicles was in the range of 20,000-25,000, a modest sum for something achieved through murder. But that wasn't the only murderous activity that this gang involved itself in.
They also used to rob trucks on highways carrying cooking gas cylinders and murder the drivers. These cylinders were used by the gas agency that Sharma ran which was only a cover for his criminal activities.
Sharma was arrested in 2004 for the illegal kidney racket he was involved in. Several other doctors were also arrested in the same matter. However, it was the discovery of his murders that made the police realize what a horrible person he is.
