Goa?s serial killer Mahanand Naik gets lucky again

A Goa court on Wednesday acquitted notorious serial killer Mahanand Naik in two more cases of murder chargsheeted against him.

The North Goa District & Session Court acquitted Mahanand on ?benefit of doubt? after hearing series of arguments by the prosecution in the murder cases of Darshana (Anusuya) Naik and Sunita Gaonkar.

With this, the alleged killer has a string of seven acquittals and one conviction wherein he has been sentenced to seven years in jail for raping his wife?s 23-year-old friend.

In the present acquittals, Mahanand was prosecuted for having killed the women after trapping them in his love.

Police claimed that the 40-year-old rickshaw driver escorted Darshana to a secluded spot at Bambolim, nine kilometers from here, where he strangulated the 21-year-old with her own duppatta and hanged the body to a cashew tree in September 27, 1994.

Likewise, on January 30, 2003, he enticed Sunita into marrying him and kidnapped her to Surla in Bicholim taluka, 45 kilometers from the capital. He allegedly killed her in the same fashion, but the police have till date failed to recover her body.

Mahahand was also charged of robbing their gold ornaments.

The alleged killer is booked under sections 302-murder, 392-robbery, 364-kidnapping, 201-destroying evidence and 411-dishonestly receiving stolen property of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Police have claimed that Mahanand, father of a two-year-old daughter put to death 16 women over a span of one-and-a-half decade beginning from 1994, before he was finally arrested in mid-2009.

His arrest came after the lone surviving victim complained of rape against him. His spate of crimes – rape, murder and robbery cases – unfolded one by one after his confession during custodial interrogation.

Police said that his modus operandi was to lure young unmarried girls with a bait of marriage. The ‘unsuspecting’ girls would fall prey to his convincing talks and elope with him.