KNOCK ON THE DOOR

KANPATTIMAAR, THE SERIAL KILLER OF 1959

In the dead of the night some one was knocking at the door. . . KNOCK . . .KNOCK . . .KNOCK . . . I froze with panic and fully covered myself with the quilt. With baited breath I waited.

The knocks came again . . Knock . . .knock . . .Knock !

Some fool in the room got up and opened the door. We had decided in the evening that the door will not be opened at night under any circumstances.

A moment later there was a dull thud. Something hitting the floor. Then silence returned. Inside the quilt I shivered and covered my ears with my hands. There was now a DEAD BODY outside for sure, with a tiny deep hole just above one of the ears. And the door must be lying open now, for a dead man cannot shut the door. The remaining seven of us were now 'sitting ducks' .

That was a cold december night in Kanpur India- many decades back. I was a student and was in kanpur for a cricket test match. The house was of a friend of my father and the drawing room was virtually a dormatory now with eight boys occupying it. All for the test match !

A serial killer had been on a rampage for sometime now, bringing the cities of kanpur and lucknow to a state of dread and a sort of curfew. Already there were many many killings. No blood, no strangulation. Very neat job by a highly skilled killer.

The psychopathic killer was an ex- dentist-gone- mad and his modus-operandi was usually this: dead in the night he would knock on the door three times. If someone did not open the door after the knocks he would repeat the knocks and then loudly call T E L E G R A M. When the door opened he swiftly struck the victim with a sharp quick strong blow of a surgical needle above one of the ears, killing him instantly. As a doctor he knew the exact vital spot above the ear. He was a terror called 'Kanpattimaar', the scourge of the two cities.

There was a killing every week and he kept his movement between the two cities unpredictable. There were no clues left behind- no fingerprints no footprints,no witnesses. Like the 'Maneating leopard of Rudraprayag' (googlesearch JIM CORBETT) who remained elusive for a long time, he had become an terrible enigma, a WILL O' THE WISP, driving the authorities into desperate frenzy.

When I had boarded the train at Lucknow for Kanpur I had a sense of relief. The killings had just started again in Lucknow and everyone was more or less certain that the killer was not in Kanpur at the moment.

At kanpur railway station I got into a rikshaw asking the man to take me to Gwaltoli colony where my father's friend lived. He looked positively reluctant.

" what is the matter?" I asked the rikshaw driver.

" saab aaj yoh gwaltoli ilaake main hi hai" he said in hindi ( sir he is lurking in Gwaltoli area itself today).

The reference was to the serial killer.

I offered him one and a half times the normal fare. He accepted. A poor man, afterall, sets more value on money than his own life.

But now it was my turn to worry. I could well have confined myself to the safety of my house in lucknow. How I regretted my decision of coming to kanpur risking my life. Cricket match my foot !

Arriving at the house at Gwaltoli I was quickly introduced to the other boys occupying the spacious living room. In those days the "drawing-cum-dining room" concept was not in vogue and houses had large separate drawing rooms.

Over dinner I came to learn that the serial killer's latest victim had lived two houses down the road. No wonder the rikshaw driver was reluctant to come!

"if somebody knocks on the door at night don't open the door under any circumstances" said our host. "we have a killer in the city." We used to affectionately call our host 'Bhagwat uncle'.

When I woke up in the morning I recalled that there was a dead body outside. I made a headcount to see which one of us was missing. One . .two . . three . . All were there except Umesh! I felt sorry for him. He was such a warm hearted character. But why did he open the door !

Next moment someone came out of the bathroom, wiping his face with a towel. He turned out to be Umesh ! who got killed then !

It came to pass that the one who opened the door was Bhagwat uncle himself and, thank heavens, he was very much alive!

It turned out that it was the old milkman who knocked early in the morning. He used to deliver milk in the colony, carrying his huge 'milk-can' . The sound of something hitting the ground came from his huge milk can !!

As an epilogue to this TRUE story I may add that the 'kanpattimaar' was eventually caught shortly afterwards. He was not in news after his arrest and we lost track of him.

Whenever I pass by the parivartan chowk area in Lucknow I always recall the 'kanpattimaar'. He had made his first 'kill' here.

And whenever I hire a rikshaw outside the Kanpur railway station I recall the fear in the eyes of that rikshaw driver.

And I canot avoid recalling the killer whenever there are three loud knocks on a door at a measured interval :

KNOCK . . .KNOCK . . . KNOCK . . .

                *****************