Adesh Khamra ran a tailoring shop in Mandideep, an industrial town about 20 kilometers from Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. In September 2018 Bhopal police arrested him and said he had admitted to killing more than 30 men on the highways of central India. The figure rose from 30 to 33 within days of his arrest and was later given as 34. Almost none of those deaths has yet been decided by a court. On September 30, 2026, a Bhopal court convicted Khamra of murdering two men in June 2018 and sentenced him to double life imprisonment, the first conviction for a killing in a record that police put at more than thirty.
The difference between what was confessed and what has been proved is the center of this case. A reported 18 First Information Reports under the murder section of the Indian penal law were registered against him, and as of May 2022 every one of them was at trial. One acquittal was reported in 2022. Three categories run through the record: the one conviction for killing, the earlier conviction for theft, and the large number of killings that remain confessions or accusations.
Police and reporters gave his age as 48 in September 2018 and a prison official gave it as 52 in 2022. A long profile in Open magazine in October 2018 reported that he had studied up to the tenth standard and trained as a tailor. His father, a subedar in the army, died in 2014. The magazine also reported that the family had come from Pakistan in the 1940s, that his grandfather had stood repeatedly in local municipal elections as an independent, and that his wife had lost a municipal election in the two years before his arrest. He and his wife had several children.
According to Open, he opened a tailoring unit in 2005 in the village of Tumsar in Maharashtra's Bhandara district and was arrested there after a fight with local people, then released on bail. In 2006 he moved to Nagpur and later returned to Mandideep after his mother died. His shop in Mandideep, which the magazine named as Z'dex Tailors, closed in 2009. Neighbors who spoke to reporters in 2018 described a quiet, well-behaved man, and Open said he had no criminal record at the Mandideep police station before his arrest.
The magazine also reported that he had spent about two years in jail in earlier cases connected with Amravati, Guna, Nagpur and Pune and had obtained bail, with those cases still pending. The charges in them are not on record.
Police gave different starting points for the killings. Bhopal police told The Week in September 2018 that the group had begun operating in 2007, with the man later named as Khamra's chief associate, Jaikaran Prajapati, working earlier for a gang from Jhansi. Open reported that police dated Khamra's first alleged killings to 2007 and linked them to a relative. A jail official quoted in 2022 put the start at 2010, and a PTI report that year said police traced the killings to the years 2009 to 2018.
Every account agrees on the shape of the allegation: that the group killed men on the highways, sold the vehicles and goods, and had contacts with buyers in other states. Police told reporters in September 2018 that they were looking for the leaders of two groups in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar who bought the vehicles, and the Bhopal Deputy Inspector General, Dharmendra Choudhary, said teams had been sent to other states to collect evidence in what he described as many cold cases. Nine people were arrested in the first stage of the inquiry.
The inquiry that reached Khamra began with a killing near Bhopal in August 2018. On August 13, according to the Daily Star's September 14, 2018 report, Bhopal police arrested Jaikaran Prajapati in connection with a double murder and a highway robbery on the edge of the city. Under questioning he named Khamra as the leader and said he had himself taken part with Khamra in 14 of the killings. Police said the remainder had been carried out by Khamra with other groups. A special investigation team was formed, headed by the South Bhopal Superintendent of Police, Rahul Kumar Lodha, while Bittu Sharma, then City Superintendent of Police, later described the arrest to PTI.
Khamra was arrested in the first week of September 2018. The Daily Star gave September 8 as the date he was taken into custody; other outlets published on September 10 and 12 described the arrest as having happened "last week". The exact day is not on record. A man named Tukaram Banjara was arrested with him, according to Open. The Quint reported that nine accused in all were remanded in police custody until September 14.
The reported number of confessions grew quickly. The Week reported on September 10 that he had confessed to 30 killings and that police said 22 of the 30 cases were unsolved. By September 12 the number was 33. The Daily Star, on September 14, reported that he had told police he killed 33 people between 2007 and August 2018, and listed highways in Maharashtra, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. A breakdown given by Bhopal police to The Week listed five killings near Raipur in Chhattisgarh, three near Wardha and two near Amravati in Maharashtra, two near Sambalpur in Odisha and ten at various places in Madhya Pradesh near Bhopal, with others in neighboring states.
The figure later given was 34. Open's October 2018 profile described the allegation as 34 killings over 11 years in as many as 23 separate incidents, said police had identified seven of the 34 men and noted that 27 cases remained unsolved, and added that Khamra's confessions covered Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, with possible links to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan. The Madhya Pradesh Director General of Police, R. K. Shukla, called the arrests a major achievement for Bhopal police and said the group appeared to have connections across several states.
Open reported that the charge sheet had not yet been framed in October 2018 and cited Sections 302, 201, 405, 406, 407 and 411 of the Indian Penal Code. It also recorded doubt, voiced by a constable and other insiders, about how much of the confession could be proved. Lodha told the magazine he would seek the death penalty.
No verdict followed in the first years after the arrest. In May 2022 the Free Press Journal, reporting from Bhopal Central Jail, said that 18 First Information Reports under Section 302 stood registered against Khamra, that all were at trial with no conviction in any of them, and that the inquiry was incomplete in the remaining murder cases to which he had confessed. The jail's deputy superintendent said Khamra had been aggressive when first held but was now a changed man who asked for religious books, performed daily prayers and took part in yoga, and had told officials that what he did was wrong and that he was ready to face the consequences. The report said his family visited rarely.
In September 2022 a PTI report, as printed by Outlook India, described him as an undertrial charged in 34 murder cases and said he had been acquitted in one of them, for lack of evidence according to police. The court and the case are not on record. PTI repeated the statement that at least 12 to 14 of the killings were in Madhya Pradesh and others in Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, and quoted Bittu Sharma, the police officer who had been involved in the 2018 arrest.
Khamra's first conviction came in a case that did not involve a killing. In April 2023 the Free Press Journal reported that the Bhopal District and Sessions Court, before Additional District Judge Jaswant Sharma, had convicted Khamra, Jaikaran Prajapati, Sunil Khatik and a man named Baljinder, also called Saheb Singh, in a case registered at the Bilkhiria police station over a truck stolen on January 6, 2018. The case had been registered under Sections 379 and 411 of the Indian Penal Code, which cover theft and dishonestly receiving stolen property. Khamra and Prajapati were each sentenced to three years of rigorous imprisonment, and Khatik and Baljinder to two years.
In February 2024 a man named Jai Karan Prajapati and two others were sentenced to life imprisonment in a separate Bhopal case concerning the death of one man, with three more men given shorter terms. Khamra was not among those convicted in that case.
On September 30, 2026, the court of the Ninth Additional Sessions Judge in Bhopal, Ashutosh Shukla, convicted Khamra and Prajapati of the murder of two men in June 2018. The victims were Rajesh Panwar and Noor Khan, and the case had been registered at the Ashoka Garden police station in Bhopal. Special Public Prosecutor Dr. Ram Kumar Khatri told the Hindi press that the court found the evidence sufficient, and Amar Ujala and Navbharat Live reported that the prosecution relied mainly on scientific evidence. The judge described the killings as planned murder and not merely a robbery.
Each man received double life imprisonment under Section 302, and Lalluram reported a fine of 1,000 rupees on each. Amar Ujala listed further terms and fines under Sections 365, 397, 414, 201 and 482, each read with Section 120B (criminal conspiracy), without giving the durations; Navbharat Live gave the additional rigorous imprisonment as 18 years in total. Two other men, Baljinder, also called Saheb Singh, and Sunil Khatik, were convicted under Section 414 read with 120B, with three years of rigorous imprisonment, and under Section 482 read with 120B, with one year.
ETV Bharat reported that police had linked Khamra to about 34 killings and that the investigating officer, Bittu Sharma, now an Assistant Commissioner of Police, spoke after the verdict. The figure of 34 is a police statement, not a finding of a court.
The September 30, 2026 conviction is his only conviction for a killing. No appeal has been made public, and no verdict in the other cases is known. In May 2022, 18 cases were at trial; the case in which he was acquitted that year has never been identified. In 2025 Khamra was in Bhopal Central Jail, where he had been held for about six years.
Convicted, by a trial court: the murder of two men in June 2018 (September 30, 2026; no appeal on record), and, in a separate case, theft and receiving stolen property (April 2023).
Confessed or attributed, not tried to a verdict: the other killings. The number varies by report: 30, 33 and 34 are all given for 2018, and Open counted as many as 23 separate incidents. A PTI report in 2022 said he had been acquitted in one case.
Points on which the record is divided: the year the killings began (2007 in The Week and Daily Star, 2010 in several outlets, 2009 in PTI); the date of arrest (September 8 in the Daily Star, "last week" in others); Khamra's age (48, 50 and 52); the spelling of his name; and the surname of one of the men in the convicted case (Panwar in most reports, Kumar in one).
2005: opens a tailoring unit in Maharashtra, according to Open magazine.
2007 or 2010: first alleged killings, according to different reports.
2009: his Mandideep shop closes, according to Open.
2014: his father dies.
January 6, 2018: the truck theft later tried in 2023.
June 2018: the two killings for which he was convicted in 2026.
August 13, 2018: Jaikaran Prajapati arrested.
September 2018: Khamra arrested; he is reported to have confessed to 30, then 33 killings.
October 2018: Open reports 34 alleged killings; the charge sheet is not yet framed.
May 2022: 18 First Information Reports under Section 302, all at trial; held in Bhopal Central Jail.
September 2022: PTI reports one acquittal.
April 2023: convicted of theft and receiving stolen property; 3 years.
September 30, 2026: convicted of the June 2018 murder of two men; double life imprisonment.