Backyard burials: What we know about Maharashtra's serial killer 'Dr Death' so far

In the world of crime, few things captivate human imaginations as much as the legends of psychopathic serial killers. Around the world, their exploits are keenly covered in the media and they are remembered with morbid nicknames befitting their crimes.

In India, the latest legend-in-the-making is Maharashtra’s “Dr Death”, 42-year-old Santosh Pol who was arrested on August 11 and has confessed to killing at least six people in his hometown of Wai in Satara district in the past 13 years. His latest victim was Mangala Jedhe, an anganwadi teacher from Wai who he kidnapped on June 15, murdered and buried in the grounds of his farmhouse.

After exhuming Jedhe’s body, police investigations led to the unearthing of five more bodies. This morning, after finding the skeletal remains of another person in Pol’s poultry farm, the Wai police indicated that the serial killer may have in fact murdered seven people.

Pol is a quack who practiced with a fake medical degree and most of his victims were reportedly his patients. His media-given nickname, Dr Death, is clearly a shout out to the mad scientist and super-villain from Batman comics. It may be a while before the police uncover the motives that drove Satara’s Dr Death to murder his many victims.

Meanwhile, here is a quick look at what has been reported about him so far.

Bright student, feared ‘doctor’

Santosh Gulabrao Pol, native to Dhom village near Wai city, grew up in Mumbai where his father worked as a BEST bus service employee. His older sister Sanjeevani Hagavane has described him as a “bright student” who got along well with her and their younger brother Deepak Pol.

Not much is known about Pol’s youth but the police has claimed that his medical degree is fake. Pol lived in his family home in Dhom up till 2003, when he moved to Wai city. In 2004 he married Seema and the couple have two sons and a daughter.

Pol ran his own clinic for a while and also worked part-time in the clinic of another doctor, Vidyadhar Ghotawadekar, till he was fired last year. This doctor has claimed to the media that Pol was not a well-behaved employee and allegedly stole an ambulance from him, for which Ghotawadekar had registered a case of theft with the Wai police. Last week, that ambulance was found in Mumbai.

Pol’s reputation in Wai and Dhom was mixed – while many respected him as a doctor, others feared because of his tendency to pick fights with other villagers. He was also known locally as an ardent anti-corruption activist.

Confessions of murder

Over the past 13 years, Pol had been a suspect in various cases of disappearances but was never arrested despite police interrogations. In the latest case, soon after anganwadi teacher Mangala Jedhe was reported as missing on June 15, Pol filed his own complaint with the police accusing her of duping him of more than 200 grams of gold.

On August 10, nearly two months after Jedhe’s disappearance, investigations of her phone call records led the Wai police to a woman called Jyoti Mandhare. Pol’s assistant and alleged lover, Mandhare confessed to helping the “doctor” kidnap Jedhe and inject her with lethal medicine that led to her death. The duo then allegedly buried her in a pit in Pol’s farmhouse that he had already been dug more than a month before the murder.

On August 11, the police arrested Pol from Mumbai, where he had attempted to escape. During interrogation, Pol reportedly admitted to killing a total of six people in Wai – five women and one man.

With the help of his confessions, the police managed to exhume the remains of all six bodies – five from the farmhouse and one from near his family home in Dhom. The remains are now being examined by forensic experts at Mumbai’s KEM hospital.

The victims

Pol’s first victim was Surekha Chikane, one of his patients, who he allegedly killed in May 2003 by hitting her head with a heavy, blunt object. According to the police, he then buried her at a spot near his Dhom house and moved to Wai soon after.

His next two victims – Vanita Gaikwad, killed in 2006, and Jagabai Pol, killed in 2010 – were also Pol’s patients. He is said to have murdered them in a similar fashion, involving hitting them on the head with hard objects. One report, however, claimed that Pol killed Gaikwad by administering a lethal injection to her in his ambulance. In all three cases, as well as in the case of Jedhe, the police suspect that Pol’s desire to acquire gold as a possible motive.

Last year, Pol was allegedly having an affair with a nurse named Salma Shaikh, but he suspected her of cheating on him with a local jeweller named Nathmal Bhandari. According to the police, Pol murdered Bhandari in December 2015 and killed Shaikh in January 2016 – both by administering lethal doses of anaesthesia and burying their bodies.

Police claim that the cold-blooded nature of Pol’s murders was evident in the way he planned their clandestine burials – in his confessions, Pol reportedly stated that he would get excavator trucks to dig the holes in his backyard a good month before each of the murders.

While exhuming the bodies of Jedhe and the other victims, the police also found two more open pits, dug nearly six feet deep, nearby. Upon interrogation, Pol allegedly claimed that he planned to murder Jyoti Mandhare next.

The Wai police have now launched fresh investigations into at least three other cases of missing persons in the region.