A predator, for example, can be a person
who commits any of the different heinous crimes which are there.
If you kill someone in a fit of rage, you'll be punished anyway.
Then why would you tamper with the body?
He decapitated his head
and literally boiled it in a saucepan.
Taking out the brain, feeling it…
It would be a very sensory experience for him.
What are you? A human?
Or a ghoul from the depths of hell?
Someone on YouTube claimed Raja Kolander would eat brains.
That he was really ferocious.
Is he insane? Do such men have wives and kids?
My father was really good as a person.
No one has said it so far. He was really nice. We were kids then.
He could not bear to see us in pain.
He barely spoke to anyone or got into fights.
He'd treat us well and take good care of us.
Father would usually wake up at 8:00 a.m.
Then he'd take a bath, conduct his prayers
have breakfast, leave for work, and return only by 4:00 p.m.
He'd take a nap after coming home and then tutored us.
He helped us with our studies.
Then he would watch TV and go to bed.
My father always taught us
that honor is everything, and to never tell a lie.
That we should never lie
and never be scared of anyone and never do wrong.
He taught us never to eye other people's wealth.
He was quite simple. He didn't joke around much.
He never lost his temper.
He was just like any other family man.
He had a way with words.
Anyone who spoke to him would be impressed.
Never did it feel like
he was or would become such a big criminal.
He was really jovial.
He got along with everyone like any average person.
We never imagined he had such a dark side.
He had a job at the COD.
It seemed like he was working.
We found out only later
what he was doing in reality, in the name of duty.
During the investigation of reporter Dheerendra Singh's death,
the police found a diary.
This diary was recovered from the farmhouse
of the prime accused Raja Kolander alias Ram Niranjan.
It is claimed that the diary contained the names of several others.
When the police nabbed him
and the interrogation began,
they first questioned Vakshraj.
He had already made many revelations.
But the police had no such evidence
which could prove the two of them were guilty,
just based on Vakshraj's testimony.
The diary was the biggest leverage the police had
that could help them with further investigation.
The diary was the only thing
that could reveal the story further.
Since Dheerendra's name was listed there
along with several other names,
I asked Vakshraj
about those names.
He replied that he "cut" them all.
"Cut" them all? I asked.
They had murdered them all.
RAJA'S SECRET UNVEILED
14 VICTIMS, NOT ONE
HAS KILLED 13 OTHERS…
14 GHASTLY MURDERS IN THREE YEARS
SERIAL KILLER?
I'm Rajat Mitra. I'm a clinical psychologist.
I work as an honorary consultant for law enforcement
when they want to investigate heinous crimes and cases.
Almost all serial killers… They maintain a diary.
They write it down.
And they do it for different purposes.
For example, when they look at their diary
they love to maintain a record of it.
Like this person, say, I would imagine…
20 years down the line, would look at his diary,
collect them and say, look at it, each day
and feel again, a high
that he inflicted such pain on so and so person.
So they do it for their enjoyment.
That's the bottom line.
The first name in the diary was Kali Prasad Srivastava.
KALI PRASAD SRIVASTAVA
Kali Prasad Srivastava was his friend.
Kali Prasad Srivastava was also working in COD, Chheoki, along with him.
My name is Lakshman Prasad Srivastava.
I'm also known as Titu.
My father was a government servant posted in COD, Chheoki.
He left home on 25 January 1997.
He left at 6:00 in the morning,
only to never return again.
We spent nights waiting for him.
We went to the Naini Police Station.
An FIR was lodged.
UTTAR PRADESH POLICE
Then followed an endless search. We went to Ayodhya.
We went to Kanpur and checked with relatives.
We wondered if he joined a hermitage.
We found out absolutely nothing.
As more time passed,
while I frequented his workplace
I got acquainted with Ram Niranjan alias Raja Kolander.
None of his other colleagues helped me.
I have to mention this,
about Raja Kolander…
He was the one to introduce me to all the authorities.
He guided me around the place,
to get the necessary documentation done.
As per Raja Kolander's claim,
Kali Prasad Srivastav had borrowed 50,000 rupees from him
and cheated him.
He wasn't returning the money.
He accused Kolander in-turn of being money-minded,
and it wasn't easy to get the money back from him.
So Kolander made a presumption that Kali Prasad had cheated him
and he wanted to teach him a lesson.
Then Kolander invited him home for a friendly chat.
They had a conversation
and then, he decapitated his head.
There was a Banyan tree in his piggery farm.
He had buried him there.
After he beheaded Kali Prasad,
a human being after all.
Guess what he did with his head?
Kali Prasad belonged to Lala community, a sub-caste in Hindu religion.
He claimed to have the sharpest mind ever.
Lalas are known to be sharp.
So Raja Kolander thought since Kali's mind was sharp,
he should sharpen his mind too.
So he took his brain out
and boiled it.
Then he and his brother-in-law drank it as if it was some sort of stew.
Then, I used to work at a garment store.
Someone read in the newspaper
that Raja Kolander had murdered 14 people.
DHEERENDRA'S KILLER HAS MURDERED 13 OTHERS
And my father's name was among them.
KALI PRASAD SRIVASTAVA
When we learned about it,
we were dumbfounded.
Our family had spent three years
waiting and weeping endlessly.
When we heard the news, it shook us to the core.
When I went to the crime scene in Naini,
I realized we had attended a wedding there.
It was his daughter's wedding.
We ate the wedding feast, exactly where my father had been buried.
Kolander confessed that after killing people,
he disposed them off in his piggery farm
by burying them.
I rushed there.
The spot was excavated following all protocols.
Some skeletal remains were found,
as well as two skulls.
One was painted red and the other, white.
He told us that the red skull belonged to Kali Prasad.
Since it was a Lala's skull, he had painted it red
because the Hindi word for red is laal.
And he told us that the white skull belonged to a certain Mohammed Moin.
Even Mohammed Moin was his colleague.
In COD.
They were well acquainted,
and as Raja Kolander himself claimed,
Moin had borrowed 25,000 rupees from him
and wasn't returning it.
Apparently, Moin had claimed
that he was a hypnotist,
and no one could take money back from him.
So he wanted to acquire that talent
as it was in his brain.
Hence, he decided to eat his brain.
He took Moin to the Yamuna bridge.
He took him there, specifically,
because it was a railway bridge
and no one ever went there.
And there, he apparently "cut" him.
Then he tossed the dead body right there
into the river.
Kolander explained that he did so
because Moin was a "Muslim",
hence, he did not bury his body
so that his soul doesn't find salvation.
He boiled the brain,
made a soup out of it,
and drank it.
He could've learned hypnotism by reading books!
Or he could've asked him how to do it.
If you eat a PhD holder's brain,
does it earn you a PhD degree?
Kolander ate his brain to learn hypnotism.
And when it didn't work, he buried the skull.
Does it make any sense?
What is he?
A human? Or a ghoul?
Whoever Raja Kolander killed,
he would oblige them.
By "oblige" I mean he befriended them.
He never confronted or fought with anyone.
In every single case,
he would befriend the victims before killing them.
So the modus operandi
of a person like Raja Kolander
would be to zero down on a victim
and build a fantasy around him
that he wants to dismember him, kill him, and go ahead.
Then, he would think of the second phase, "how to go about it?"
He would make a meticulous plan
and he would do that in an organized way
till he works out everything to the last detail.
This is the work of a predator.
So Raja Kalandar, I would say in all possibility
the fact that he's a predator
and to a very high degree as that cannot be ruled out.
Sorry for the delay, gentlemen.
-How are you? -I'm good.
Move a bit to the right.
Let's get you mic'd up.
These people have pinned on me
not one but 14 murders.
All unsolved murders in Uttar Pradesh
were heaped upon me.
I've been saying that I'm innocent. I never issued a statement.
The police are twisting facts as they see fit.
But nobody listened.
They conspired against me.
They claimed that I went on a killing spree
and made the revelations so abruptly.
I have just one question.
The Raja Kolander trial that's been going on for weeks
has shed light on some new facts.
On one hand, the police claims
that he was a cannibalistic murderer
and has taken almost 14 lives.
On the other hand, it is also being claimed
that some of the victims that were named
are still alive.
What is the truth behind Raja Kolander?
Has anyone escaped from his clutches so far?
I am Deepak Patel.
I am originally from Shankargarh
which is one of the 12 constituencies under Prayagraj District.
The district council elections were happening in the year 2000.
DISTRICT COUNCIL, PRAYAGRAJ
The district council had two seats in the Shankar Block.
My mother, Kesari Devi Patel, who is the Member of Parliament,
had then contested for one seat
and Raja Kolander's wife Phoolan Devi contested for the other.
Those seats were reserved for Scheduled Caste women candidates.
VOTE FOR KETTLE, SUPPORT PHOOLAN DEVI
Then both of them won the elections.
After winning, my mother became the district council president.
And in these elections,
the elected members in-turn elect the president.
VOTE FOR KETTLE, SUPPORT PHOOLAN DEVI
Therefore we had to meet them.
We were already well acquainted.
We had to visit them many times.
DISTRICT COUNCIL, PRAYAGRAJ
The election for the post of district council president
was scheduled for 6 August 2000.
So Raja Kolander called up
on August 3 or 4
stating elections were approaching.
He asked us to meet him if we wanted his continued support.
Or else, he wouldn't vote for us.
My father wasn't at home and came back around 8:30 p.m.
He had to go somewhere again.
I got excited and offered to meet him instead.
He had called to ask if we were coming,
I told him that I was.
However, he asked me to come all alone.
I told him that I will have someone accompanying me,
however, we could speak privately, but he was adamant.
When I reached there,
the ambiance of the place was strange.
He started talking about money and other stuff.
He asked me if I'd brought money.
I refused and said we weren't looking to buy votes.
I told him he should support us as we were like his family.
He said he could see the money bulging in my pocket.
I was wearing denim trousers.
I was carrying money but it wasn't meant for him.
I told him it was getting dark and we should finish our negotiations.
But he said he wanted to pray first.
I sat down and waited as he began his prayer rituals.
After around 20 minutes he began acting strange.
He'd made me park my car around 50 meters
away from his property.
Then, he continued praying,
and meantime,
I felt this strange fear or sixth sense perhaps.
I got up and left at once
without informing him.
Later when the facts were revealed,
I visited the crime scene.
I had a curiosity.
When they began finding skeletons and parts,
the bodies had been found
right underneath the spot
where I was sitting that night.
To put it simply, that was a close shave.
But you never know what the other person was thinking.
Maybe, he just wanted to talk.
But the circumstances that day…
The manner in which he took me away from his house
and acted strangely
raises many doubts.
What were his intentions behind taking me there?
From what I have understood
from studying his case
and also from having worked
with many serial killers over the years is that
the kind of personality disorder a person like Raja Kolander would be having
perhaps would be closest to Anti-social Personality Disorder,
what earlier used to be called as Psychopathic Personality Disorder.
Such people have no respect
for the rules and laws of society.
They have no empathy for others,
and they don't believe in a sense of consensual-mutual right and wrong
These people see themselves as victims,
and they feel that they have an inordinate right
to control, destroy, or kill others,
and they are not responsible for that.
My name is Badri Narayan.
I would say I am a social scientist
who has been working for almost 35 years
for the rights of the Dalit and marginalized community,
their assertions, and subaltern assertions.
I am Hansraj Kol.
I am a social worker
who works for the progress and upliftment
of the tribal community of the area.
Speaking of Ram Niranjan,
or Kolander as he was called
by his popular name…
He, himself, belonged to the Kol community.
It is a vast tribal community,
which currently lives
in Uttar Pradesh and parts of Madhya Pradesh
and in Bundelkhand areas,
became a part of the mainstream society,
thus, moving away
from their tribal roots.
The reason is when there was deforestation,
they migrated here
and acquired farming skills.
So they adopted the culture of those who live outside the forests.
Hence, it became a "Community in Hybridity," as we call it,
when a community thrives in a hybrid mentality.
Hybridity in the sense that
hybridity in socio-economic form
and hybridity of mindset.
Because tribal values are part of their daily lives
but along with that,
they also have to deal with non-tribal values.
So it is a community in-flux, in a way.
Their community is going through a transition.
Even today, 75% of the Kol community
dwells in slums and shanties
and has to work really hard
for two square meals a day.
That is how they sustain themselves.
I am talking about 75% of Kol tribes.
Speaking of their cuisine,
their traditional culinary habits include
consumption of meat and alcohol.
Fishing is one of their community activities.
And so is hunting in the forests.
They hunt and consume wild boars.
Fish and poultry are at the core of their routine diet.
DISTRICT JAIL, UNNAO
-Were you always a vegetarian? -Yes, always.
My wife chewed betelnut and paan but I had no such vices.
All right, then.
Have you never consumed meat or fish before?
I would eat fish occasionally. I do not deny it.
But not on a regular basis.
My family does eat non-vegetarian food.
But I was not so inclined to it.
If the family had prepared fish on a few occasions,
they would cook vegetarian daal for me.
Hope you got my point.
I do not know whether he was a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian,
or if he drank alcohol.
But he ate what the whole family ate. We cooked nothing separately.
He ate vegetables, fish, poultry, and meat.
Everyone loves non-vegetarian food, right?
We had a piggery farm.
They would cook meat there.
Even mom and dad would eat there.
But usually, my mother never cooked meat.
So, we never had meat at home.
We mostly cooked and ate meat here.
He had a separate pan here, apparently.
He said he used it to boil leaves.
But they would also cook pork in that.
It is an absolute lie that he boiled and consumed brains.
There is a stigma attached to the Kol community.
It is labeled as primitive
and tribal in nature.
It is presumed that tribesmen are natural cannibals.
But there is no evidence of it so far.
And all those things said about him
are complete lies.
Raja Kolander's lifestyle
does consist of tribal values.
Be it in the form of memories,
habits, or preferences.
Or through the feeling of being displaced.
But there are no instances of cannibalism
found in tribal lifestyles.
I do not have any concrete literature
that mentions the consumption of the human brain.
There is no mention of it anywhere.
That is his individual self
which he added to his crimes.
Because, when one decides to commit a crime,
he also develops a criminal self,
that is a form of a strategy.
And that criminal self
is often a distorted-reflection of one's own frustration.
I feel that the instances of cannibalism
were his own additions.
It has no relation whatsoever to the tribal culture.
He confessed in the court that he "cut" them.
He confessed that he cut it out, boiled it, and drank it
while he was in police remand.
Back then, the judge presiding over the court in Unnao
from where I took his remand custody
was by-caste a 'Srivastava'.
He was so baffled
that he called me over and told me,
What sort of a savage have you brought to the court?
have you brought to the court?"
TERRIFYING SECRET
KILLING SPREE
SAVIOR BECOMES KILLER
WOULD BOIL AND DRINK BRAINS
KOLANDER
When the police nabbed Vakshraj and Raja Kolander,
they interrogated them and held a press conference.
It was held at Police Lines.
When we reached the press conference venue
police officers were present there with Raja Kolander,
and there were two skulls kept at the side.
His eyes and facial expressions
reflected strange distress.
His face was reflecting cruelty.
He confessed his crimes before the press,
down to the last detail.
When he was asked about the names listed in the diary,
he started narrating it all.
He told all about Dheerendra's case.
How he invited him over to "oblige,"
the way he killed, and "cut" him.
How he stuffed the body in a sack and carried it in his vehicle.
Since when did you know the reporter Dheerendra?
That reporter was from my wife's village.
We had never even met. We had only spoken over the phone.
When we won the elections, it was a formality.
As he was from my wife's village he was like a family friend.
I knew Dheerendra uncle quite well.
He worked at a press in Allahabad, and would often visit home.
I invited him over many times, but he never visited.
And he was always of great help.
Dheerendra would often visit them.
They were quite well acquainted.
Dheerendra would often come down to see my brother-in-law.
They were on good terms.
If they were having a discussion and I walked in on them,
the reporter, Dheerendra, would ask me
to leave them alone for a while as it was a private discussion.
We have only exchanged formal greetings.
We just said hello.
I have seen him personally only a couple of times.
I personally feel
all this must have happened because of the reporter's fault.
Because my brother-in-law held him in high regard.
Then he must have done something to warrant this.
The other person must have provoked him.
My father has done nothing.
I still say it. My father is innocent.
The rest are false allegations.
Because there were one or two victims
who are still alive but were declared dead.
He has clearly been framed.
He may have killed one or two,
but they piled the rest upon him.
As far as I know, it is not true
that some of his victims are still alive.
But wherever he showed us it was confirmed
that dead bodies were present there.
And the identity of the dead body
must have been established
by the respective local police stations.
They pinned one of my neighbor's murders on me.
But I knew for sure that he is alive.
If one is alive, can't there be more?
It is possible.
If I committed 14 murders,
whose body was claimed to be those of the living ones?
They're bringing and planting skeletons from the riverbank
and fabricating evidence.
And, the painted skull in question…
They claimed I painted Lala Srivastava's skull red.
The police just said,
"Oh, he painted Lala's skull red," and all that.
No one ever heard me out in remand custody.
Then who do I turn to? When my own saviors
are turning a deaf ear to me.
Whom can I expect help from?
Just to achieve power and dominion,
he committed all these murders.
The Kol tribe's mindset is such after all.
To absorb someone's power, they cut them
and drink their brains.
It's not shocking because he's a Kol tribesman.
The Kol tribe dwelled in forests before and sustained on meat.
So, I personally think
that he committed all this
to gain power.
Kol is a doubly-subaltern community and that's because firstly,
they changed from tribal to non-tribal.
They have a memory of loss.
Secondly, they were declared SC or Scheduled Caste.
They want to remain a Scheduled Tribe and don't want to become SC.
Because they wish to retain their tribal origin.
A lot of protests are going on for it.
The community wants to retain their ST status and doesn't want to become SC.
Another concern is even in SCs
the non-tribal SCs treat them in the same way
as a dominant caste does.
Multiple levels of marginalization.
Multiple levels of discrimination.
They experience all this in their day-to-day lives.
The police violate human rights for a day. They thrash people and release them.
But the court violates human rights by dragging the case forever.
I have been a victim of it.
I've been attending court for 20 years. You are ostracized.
They treat you inhumanly.
If you file any application, they do not pass a clear verdict.
Justice is beyond the reach of the poor.
Every serial killer, by the way,
in his mind is a victim. He is not a perpetrator.
They don't believe in the justice system.
They believe it is unfair, against them,
and they believe that what they are doing
is not only providing justice to themselves
but also justice to the victims.
In their mind, killing the victim is justice.
TRUTH SHALL PREVAIL
He had killed all kinds of people. Some were his colleagues too.
But for some reason, he felt upper caste people are oppressing him.
That they are powerful both socially and financially.
And he wanted to be a powerful man.
Deep within, he did resent upper caste people.
That is why most of his victims are upper caste individuals.
SANTOSH SHUKLA ASHOK KUMAR
When I was interrogating Raja Kolander,
he told me when he had visited Chitrakoot
he saw a Jeep Commander SUV there.
And its driver was from the Brahmin caste.
It is believed that Brahmins eat heartily.
He presumed that their intestines must be bigger.
So, he hired that Jeep SUV to drive him back from Chitrakoot.
Then he tied up that Brahmin alive in his piggery farm
and ripped his stomach open.
He pulled out his intestines
and inspected them.
Also, there was another man, God knows from which caste.
He ripped him open too and pulled out his intestines.
And when he compared them, they were the same size.
So he buried both of them
right there in his piggery farm.
In fact, the spot where he buried the Brahmin victim
he had planted a small Banyan tree.
Then, he burnt incense sticks before it
to avoid the wrath of Lord Brahma.
A person like him…
They see body parts with a lot of fascination.
They do it very differently from a doctor.
The doctor, for example, would see the body parts
from a clinical, dispassionate way
or the way we see body parts.
They see body parts very much like from the point of view of a child
who is wanting to break a thing
into different pieces.
Like, if you give a child a toy, what does the child do?
The child wants to take the toy, break it into parts
to see what it is.
That's part of the enjoyment.
The same, for example, he would get
by taking out the brain, feeling it.
It would be a very sensory experience for him.
And that is their inner world. That is their inner life that they lead
and it is part of the elaborate thinking that they go through.
If you consider Ram Niranjan's life history,
the politics of his time plays a huge role.
And, the politics in Uttar Pradesh
was transforming around the 90s.
It had a favorable condition for subaltern uprising.
Kanshi Ram's entry into mainstream politics
saw the emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party,
and he was representing the aspirations
of the marginal community from all over the state.
Even Mulayam Singh Yadav was representing
the political aspirations of OBCs, MBCs,
and marginalized communities through Samajwadi Party.
The third factor was
the jungles of Banda and Chitrakoot
were witnessing an uprising of dacoits.
At the same time, in Chambal Valley,
Phoolan Devi's notoriety was at its peak.
All these are subaltern forms of protest.
Through politics and electoral democracy
and through dacoity culture
to challenge the law and its institutes.
And this was the time he was thriving.
But it was not so easy for him
to enter a party and get candidacy.
Hence, he sought, formed, and executed his own methods
to acquire power.
DISTRICT COUNCIL MEMBER
This man, Raja Kolander,
had a burning desire to become powerful.
He wanted to be a politician
as he confessed in his statement to the police.
When I took him under remand custody and would travel with him,
I asked him why he was doing this.
He replied with a non-committal laugh
that the current legislator
from his constituency had grown too arrogant
and he wanted to contest elections against him.
And when he became just as powerful,
people would fear him.
My brother-in-law won the village council elections.
My brother-in-law won the District Council Presidency elections.
One of my nephews won the Village Council Member elections.
My sister-in-law won Block Development Council elections.
I planned to contest as Member of Legislative Assembly in 2001.
This caused panic among ministers.
And that is why they plotted against me this way.
None of this would have happened had I not entered politics.
Get it?
The Shakargarh area that Kolander hails from
is a Kol majority area.
He wanted to maintain his supremacy among the Kol community.
So that he could have their respect and a political position.
So that he could grow more powerful and reach the top.
Such were his intentions.
He would associate himself with the tradition
of kings and monarchy.
Hence, he named himself "Raja" which means king,
and wrote the same in his diary too.
RAJA'S DIARY
He believed that he dispensed justice by killing his victims.
That it was a king's justice.
His own justice system…
and made his own laws.
Thus, the self-proclaimed name Raja Kolander.
Like Raja Manda, Raja Shankargarh,
here was Raja Kolander.
Subtitle translation by: Bharath VH