In the summer of 1968, people sleeping in huts and on pavements on the northern and western edges of Bombay were being killed at night, struck on the head as they slept. On the morning of August 27, 1968, a police sub-inspector named Alex Fialho stopped a man in the crowded Bhendi Bazaar area of south Bombay and took him to the Dongri police station. The man was known in police records as Sindhi Dalwai and to the press as Raman Raghav. He had a long record of theft and no fixed home. In November 1968 he confessed before a magistrate, and police later said he had admitted at least 41 killings between 1966 and 1968.
Only one case ever went to trial: the killing of two men, Lalchand Jagannath Yadav and Dular Jaggi Yadav, as they slept in a hut on a farm at Chinchavli, in Malad, on the night of August 25 to 26, 1968. He pleaded guilty, the court heard the evidence anyway, and on August 13, 1969, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The confirmation of that sentence was still pending 18 years later. His lawyers argued that he was mentally ill; a board of psychiatrists found him of unsound mind; the Supreme Court of India upheld the High Court's decision to halt the proceedings; and in August 1987 the Bombay High Court confirmed his conviction but replaced the death sentence with life imprisonment. He died in custody in Pune, of kidney failure. The year is reported differently in different sources.
The case is known mainly from three court judgments: the Bombay High Court's order of January 14, 1970, the Supreme Court's judgment of February 19, 1975, and the Bombay High Court's final judgment of August 4, 1987. Press reports, chiefly from the Press Trust of India and Scroll.in, fill in what the court records do not cover. The figure of 41 killings comes from his own statements as reported by police, and no court ever ruled on it.
Little is known of his early life, and much of what is known comes from his own words. When he gave evidence on oath in the sessions court in August 1969, he gave his name as Sindhi Dalwai, said he was about 40, and gave an address in Tirunelveli district, in what is now Tamil Nadu, according to the Bombay High Court's 1987 judgment. Scroll.in, writing in 2015, described him as a Tamil who came to Bombay in 1950 and worked for a few years as a mill hand. He went by many names; the courts used "Sindhi Dalwai alias Raman Raghav" and "Sindhi alias Raman", and the press settled on Raman Raghav.
His confession, as summarized by one of the High Court judges in 1987, described a criminal life that began in childhood. He was sent to a Borstal school, the reformatory system for young offenders. As an adult he drank, took drugs and visited prostitutes, and he paid for these habits by stealing. He was convicted of theft several times and was once involved in a murder case, and he served about five years in prison in all. After his release from his last term, the judge wrote, he could not find work, and he began to kill the people inside houses before stealing from them. He claimed, Scroll.in reported, that he had been arrested several times on theft charges that were trumped up.
One of the judges who heard his case in 1987 noted that witnesses who met him before the Malad killings saw nothing unusual in his behavior, and concluded that he had acted like an ordinary criminal. The psychiatrists who examined him after his conviction saw a man with a long-standing mental illness. That disagreement ran through every stage of his case.
Police later said he had terrorized Bombay between 1966 and 1968, killing poor men and women, most of them pavement and hut dwellers, by striking them with a blunt object such as an iron rod while they slept, the Press Trust of India reported in 2020. The Hitavada, reporting the same news, gave the same account. Ramakant Kulkarni, the senior police officer who led the hunt, wrote in his memoir Footprints on the Sands of Crime that the killings appeared to have no motive, and that the violence was out of all proportion to the small gains involved, according to Scroll.in, which quoted the book in 2015. Kulkarni also recorded, Scroll.in reported, that one of the victims was a six-month-old baby.
The victims were among the poorest people in the city: people living in makeshift huts and temporary shelters, and people who slept on the footpaths because they had nowhere else to go. Almost none of them have been named. The court records name only the two men in the case that went to trial, and the press accounts give numbers rather than names.
The official record of the earlier killings is thin. No court judgment describes the attacks of 1966, and no reliable count of the people attacked or killed that year has been reported. The figure of 41 comes from his own confession, as reported by police and repeated in the press; it was never tested in court.
The Bombay High Court's 1970 judgment gives the clearest official picture of the second series. In July and August 1968, the court recorded, a series of murders took place in the western suburbs of Greater Bombay. Police came to suspect him because of features the crimes had in common, but he had no fixed residence and moved about at night, which made him hard to find.
On August 25, 1968, a woman in Kandivli gave police a description of the clothes worn by the man they were looking for, and the description was sent to every police station in the city. That same night, two men were killed as they slept in a hut on a farm at Chinchavli, in Malad.
About ten cases were eventually registered against him over the killings of that period, the 1970 judgment says. Charge sheets were filed in all of them. He was tried in only one.
The two men killed at Chinchavli were Lalchand Jagannath Yadav and Dular Jaggi Yadav. The Supreme Court described them in 1975 as brothers. The High Court's 1970 judgment described them as employees of the owner of the stables where they lived and worked. They were asleep in a hut beside the stables when they were attacked on the night of August 25 to 26, 1968. Little else about them appears in the court records or in reliable reporting.
The prosecution's account, accepted by the trial court and later by the High Court, was that he went to the stables to steal. He knew that the stable owner's man kept the takings in a cupboard in the office there, and he admitted in his own evidence that he had known about the cupboard since 1965. The two men were sleeping where he wanted to go, and the court found he killed them to remove them from his way.
The weapon had been prepared in advance. On August 13, 1968, he borrowed an iron bar from a friend, saying he needed it for digging to build a room, the 1987 judgment records. The bar was about three to three and a half feet long. He then took it to a blacksmith, who cut and shaped it to his instructions for ten rupees. Both men gave evidence at the trial.
A watchman at the farm and his son heard a noise in the night, came out with a torch, and saw him leave the hut and run. He took with him a gamcha, a thin cotton towel, and some coins from the hut. He hid the iron bar and the gamcha in a remote place. The police surgeon carried out post-mortem examinations on August 26, 1968, and found that both had died of head injuries.
The judges later listed what showed his state of mind that night: a motive, preparation, the choice of the hour, flight and the hiding of the weapon. Those findings were the basis for the court's rejection of his insanity defense.
The officer in charge of the investigation was Ramakant Kulkarni, then Deputy Commissioner of Police in the Criminal Investigation Department (Crime). He had only just taken charge when reports of a killer in the suburbs began to spread, Scroll.in reported. His daughter told The Pioneer in 2016 that it was the first case he handled after he was appointed head of the Bombay Crime Branch in 1968, and that many people questioned his methods at the time.
Kulkarni went on to a long career. He was credited with building the Bombay Crime Branch, was sometimes called the Sherlock Holmes of India, retired in 1990, and founded a forensic science institute in Delhi, The Pioneer reported. The paper published its profile of him after his death.
On August 27, 1968, at about 8 a.m., Police Sub-Inspector Alex Fialho of the Dongri police station saw him on a road in the Bhendi Bazaar area of south Bombay and took him to the police station, the 1970 judgment records. The 1987 judgment gives the same date and hour. Fialho was far from the suburbs where the killings had taken place, and he had no tip from an informer.
Accounts published when Fialho died in 2020 describe how it happened. Officials told the Press Trust of India that he acted on suspicion alone. He had studied the case and carried a photograph of the suspect. He noticed that the man's umbrella was wet on a dry day, and found that it had been raining in Malad, where the man had last been seen. Indian Masterminds, a news site, gave a slightly different version: that Fialho had no informer, no prior information and not even a proper photograph, and that the arrest was a chance meeting on a busy road. According to that account, the man was wearing khaki trousers, a blue shirt and canvas shoes and carrying an umbrella; he did not panic when approached, but crossed the road too quickly, which drew Fialho's attention.
At the police station he gave a false name and an alibi, the reports said. Fingerprint experts confirmed who he was, according to PTI.
Two days later, on August 29, 1968, the watchman and his son from the Chinchavli farm picked him out at an identification parade conducted by a magistrate. On his information, police recovered the iron bar and the gamcha from where he had hidden them. Blood of the A and B groups, matching the blood of the two dead men, was found on the bar and on his blue shirt and khaki trousers, the 1987 judgment records.
The Police Commissioner, E. S. Modak, announced a cash reward of 1,000 rupees for Fialho, and Fialho received the President's Police Medal for the arrest, PTI reported. Indian Masterminds said he was promoted soon afterward.
According to a 2016 account in The Week, he refused at first to answer questions, even when beaten and kept hungry, and began to cooperate only after he asked for chicken curry and the police gave it to him. He then confessed to 41 killings and took the police on a tour of the city to the places where he had operated, The Week reported. The court records do not describe his questioning by police, and the claims about his treatment in custody were never examined in court.
The confession that mattered in law was made before a magistrate. In November 1968 he offered to confess, and his statement was recorded over three days, November 11 to 13, by a Presidency Magistrate, Ram Manohar Devare. In it he described all the killings, including those of Lalchand and Dular Yadav, the 1970 judgment says. Kulkarni's memoir, as quoted by Scroll.in, records that when the magistrate asked what had led him to confess, he said he was doing so of his own accord, and that he had "orders from above".
In 1987 one of the High Court judges went back to that confession and found it voluntary and true. He also noted that it said nothing about receiving orders from "Kanoon", the word for law that later ran through the psychiatric evidence. On January 16, 1969, before an Additional Chief Presidency Magistrate at the committal stage, he said again that he had killed two people at Malad. He declined a lawyer at that stage; under the court's practice rules, an advocate was later appointed for him at the State's expense.
The case was committed to the court of an Additional Sessions Judge in Greater Bombay as Sessions Case No. 65 of 1969. His State-appointed advocate, Mr. Pawar, met him twice in prison and came away convinced that he was of unsound mind and could not defend himself. Toward the end of May 1969 he applied under section 465 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which required a court to postpone a trial if the accused was found to be of unsound mind and unable to make his defense.
On June 2, 1969, the day the trial was due to start, the judge put a short series of questions to him and recorded his answers, then sent him to the Police Surgeon of Bombay, Dr. Christopher Adams Frankline, for observation. Dr. Frankline observed him for about three weeks, from June 3 to June 23, 1969, according to the 1970 judgment. His conclusions were that the prisoner had no psychosis and was not mentally retarded; that his memory was sound and his intelligence average; that he understood the nature and object of the proceedings and could make a rational defense; that he was aware of the nature and purpose of his acts; and that he was not certifiably insane and could stand trial. Dr. Frankline gave evidence and was cross-examined.
On July 24, 1969, the judge ruled. He found some abnormal traits, including excitability, violence and unusual ideas about his own status, but held that the prisoner was not incapable of making his defense. The trial went ahead.
When the charge was read, he pleaded guilty. He said he had killed two people at Chinchavli, in Malad, though he did not know their names or the date, and he said he wanted to cross-examine about how the two men had been lying on the cot. He also complained that the government had given him a lawyer but no money for soap or for a woman, the 1970 judgment records.
The court did not simply accept the plea. The prosecution called 32 witnesses. The court examined him under section 342 of the Code, the procedure that allows an accused person to explain the evidence against him, over two days; he admitted the killings and gave answers that were generally rational, though he wandered into irrelevant statements at the end.
On August 4, 1969, he gave evidence on oath. Asked why he had killed the two men, he said there was a war between three governments. He also said he had killed them out of greed for money. He could not explain the war. In cross-examination he admitted that he knew the stable owner's man kept the takings in a cupboard, and that he had gone there to steal.
The defense then called Dr. Anant Pundlik Patkar, an assistant psychiatrist at Nair Hospital in Bombay. With the court's permission, Dr. Patkar interviewed him at Arthur Road Prison on August 5, 1969, for about an hour and a half. He diagnosed chronic paranoid schizophrenia or paraphrenia, and put its onset at about two years earlier. When he asked what "Kanoon" was, the prisoner put his hand on his stomach and said that Kanoon was inside him. The defense used this evidence to argue that he was not criminally responsible under section 84 of the Indian Penal Code, which excuses an act done by a person who, because of unsoundness of mind, cannot know its nature or that it is wrong or contrary to law. In cross-examination Dr. Patkar accepted that he could give no opinion on the prisoner's state of mind in August 1968.
The trial judge did not believe Dr. Patkar. He found the prisoner guilty of murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and, on August 13, 1969, sentenced him to death.
Years later, Dr. Patkar told the filmmaker Sriram Raghavan to see the man as someone who was sick and not only as a criminal, Scroll.in reported in 2015.
He did not appeal. In a statement recorded in jail he said he thought the government's inquiry was improper and that he did not want to appeal; he had committed the murder, he said, and was prepared to be hanged. Under the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1898, however, a sentence of death could not be carried out until the High Court confirmed it. The sessions judge referred the case to the Bombay High Court, where it became Confirmation Case No. 20 of 1969.
On October 22, 1969, he asked to be present at the High Court hearing. He was moved, at his own request, from Yeravda Central Prison in Pune to Arthur Road Prison in Bombay. The court appointed two lawyers at the State's expense to help it: D. M. Rane, an advocate, and Mr. Mengde, a senior advocate, who acted as amicus curiae, a friend of the court.
Rane interviewed him on January 8, 1970, and found the interview unsatisfactory. Mengde saw him the next day. What Mengde told the court, as recorded in the High Court's judgment of January 14, 1970, was a list of beliefs. The prisoner said he had not appealed because he was willing to hang. He thought he had been tried for theft, not murder. He believed he received telephone messages at any time. He believed God had commanded him, under a "Kanun", to commit murders, and that he had an agreement with God to commit theft and murder. He regarded killing as his profession. He believed he could turn men into women, or into other objects. He held a grudge against everyone, including his own relatives.
Mengde told the court that the prisoner's thoughts were completely disjointed and that he could not have a purposeful conversation with him. He asked for a full examination by a board of psychiatrists. The State, represented by Mr. Dalvi, opposed the request. Its argument was that section 465 applied only to a trial, and that a confirmation hearing in the High Court was neither a trial nor an appeal.
Justice Palekar of the Bombay High Court, writing for the court, rejected the State's argument. A trial, he held, was not over until a sentence that could be carried out had been passed, and a death sentence could not be carried out until the High Court confirmed it. The confirmation stage was in substance a continuation of the trial, with powers to take more evidence that resembled the powers of an appeal court. An accused person who became unable to defend himself at that stage was entitled to the same protection as at trial. The court relied on earlier rulings of the Supreme Court and of the Calcutta High Court.
The court also rejected the argument that the question had already been settled at the trial. Fresh and reliable material about his capacity had to be looked at, whatever the earlier finding. The court drew a distinction that would matter later: section 84 of the Penal Code dealt with criminal responsibility for an act, while section 465 dealt only with whether a person could defend himself now. If he recovered, the proceedings would go on.
The court asked the Surgeon-General of Bombay to set up a special medical board of three psychiatrists under the Bombay Jail Manual. It was to decide whether he was of unsound mind and, if so, whether he could make his defense in the confirmation proceedings. He was to be examined at Arthur Road Prison and held there, and the board was to report within 15 days.
Dr. Balakrishna Laxman Chandorkar, superintendent of a mental hospital, was assigned by the board to interview him. He held about 14 interviews, examined him physically, sent him to several hospitals for special tests and gathered his history. On February 28, 1970, he reported that the prisoner had paranoid schizophrenia, was of unsound mind and could not make his defense, the Supreme Court later recorded. The board, chaired by Dr. Marfatia, examined him five more times.
Its conclusions were these. He was of unsound mind, suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia or paraphrenia; he was dangerous to society and certifiably insane. He knew he was killing human beings, and he knew that what he did was wrong under the law of the land, but he believed it was right under "Kanoon", a higher law that, in his mind, was the only law that mattered. He had no insight into his illness, held firm delusions, did not grasp the gravity of the crime, and had judgment shaped by delusions and hallucinations. For those reasons he could not cooperate with his lawyers or make his defense.
The High Court examined Dr. Marfatia and Dr. Chandorkar as its own witnesses. On July 3, 1970, it held that the prisoner was clearly of unsound mind and, as a result, unable to make his defense. It postponed the confirmation proceedings and directed the State to keep him in safe custody at Yeravda Central Prison.
The State of Maharashtra appealed to the Supreme Court of India by special leave, as Criminal Appeal No. 158 of 1971. It argued that section 465 did not reach confirmation proceedings; that an accused had no right to be heard in such proceedings; that the High Court had handed its decision to the doctors and turned the case into a trial by doctors; and that the prisoner, who knew what he had done and knew he had been sentenced, was not legally insane, whatever his clinical state.
Justices Ranjit Singh Sarkaria and V. R. Krishna Iyer heard the appeal, and Justice Sarkaria wrote the judgment, delivered on February 19, 1975. The court held that a trial could not be treated as finished until a sentence that could be carried out had been passed by a competent court, and that confirmation proceedings were in substance a continuation of the trial. The words "at his trial" in section 465 had to be read generously, in keeping with the principle that a person must be heard before he is condemned. The High Court could not refuse to hear an accused in confirmation proceedings, in person or through a lawyer.
On the charge that the High Court had let the doctors decide, the Supreme Court found that it had not simply accepted the experts' word: it had examined them as witnesses, weighed detailed and reasoned evidence and made its own findings. The Supreme Court reviewed the medical evidence itself and agreed with the High Court's conclusion on his capacity. The appeal was dismissed.
He spent the following years at Yeravda in Pune, where he was treated for his illness and periodic reports on his mental state were sent to the High Court. In 1984 a medical board almost gave up his case as hopeless and reported "incurable schizophrenia", the 1987 judgment records. He then improved. Dr. Kelkar, superintendent of the Central Institute of Mental Health and Research at Yeravda, reported that he was of sound mind and able to instruct a lawyer, and sent a further, more detailed report when the court asked for one. The judges then questioned him themselves, found that he understood the proceedings and could instruct counsel, and took up the confirmation case again.
The confirmation case was finally decided by a division bench of the Bombay High Court, Justice R. A. Jahagirdar and Justice Tated, on August 4, 1987, nearly 19 years after the killings at Chinchavli. His lawyer was S. R. Chitnis, and a Special Public Prosecutor appeared for the State. The judgment is reported as (1987) 89 Bombay Law Reporter 423.
The court first upheld the trial judge's handling of the fitness question: Dr. Frankline was competent to give his opinion, and the prisoner's answers at trial showed that he understood what was happening. It then reviewed the evidence of guilt and found it proved: the motive of theft, the preparation of the weapon, the timing, the flight, the hiding of the bar and the gamcha, and their recovery on his information.
On insanity under section 84, both judges held that the defense had not been made out. Justice Jahagirdar held that a person who knows the nature of his act and knows that it is contrary to law cannot claim the protection of the section, even if he believes it is morally right. Justice Tated held that "wrong" in the section meant contrary to law. He pointed out that the word "Kanoon" did not appear in the November 1968 confession, and that talk of Kanoon and of telephone orders from "Above" first surfaced in the interviews with defense lawyers. The conduct before, during and after the crime, both judges said, showed a man who knew what he was doing and that it was against the law. The conviction for murder was confirmed.
On sentence the two judges took different paths to the same place. Justice Jahagirdar noted that the death sentence had been passed in 1969, before the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1973, under which life imprisonment became the rule and death the exception. He treated the passage of nearly 19 years as a very important circumstance, together with the years the prisoner had spent as a schizophrenia patient under treatment and the 1984 report that his case was hopeless. A person who had gone through such travails, he wrote, should not be sent to the gallows.
Justice Jahagirdar also used the case to make a wider point. Pleas of insanity, he wrote, were often met with suspicion, and the people who raised them usually came from the poorer and weaker sections of society and were defended by advocates appointed by the State. He urged courts to consult qualified psychiatrists, and called distrust of psychiatry highly injurious.
Justice Tated took a harder view of the crime. He called it one of the rarest of rare cases, with no parallel in legal history, and said the death sentence had been justified. He reviewed the Supreme Court's rulings on delay in carrying out death sentences. In the end he agreed that the sentence should go, because the prisoner had been under sentence of death for about 18 years. He added that there was no immediate danger to society, since eight more trials awaited the prisoner and he would remain in prison for a long time.
The court's order was short. The conviction under section 302 was affirmed. The death sentence was set aside, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life, with credit under section 428 of the 1973 Code for the time he had already spent in custody.
Later press accounts, among them HuffPost India in 2015 and The Week in 2016, say the sentence was reduced because he was found incurably mentally ill. The judgment itself gives the long delay as the main reason, together with his long illness and treatment; it does not rest the decision on a finding that he was incurable, and by 1987 he had been found fit to instruct counsel.
The fate of the other cases registered against him is unclear. In 1987 Justice Tated referred to eight more trials still awaiting him. No later trial, conviction or withdrawal has been reported. The killings beyond the two at Malad are therefore attributed to him by police and admitted in his own statements, but none of them was ever proved in court.
He spent the rest of his life in custody at Yeravda, according to press accounts, and was treated at the Central Institute of Mental Health and Research there. He died of kidney failure at Sassoon Hospital in Pune. The Press Trust of India, in its 2020 report on Fialho's death, gave the year as 1995. The Week, in 2016, and HuffPost India, in 2015, also gave 1995. Scroll.in, in 2015, gave the date as April 7, 1988, and his age as 63. No official record of the death has come to light.
Alex Fialho rose to the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police. He died at his home in Mumbai on November 13, 2020, aged 92; his son told Indian Masterminds that the cause was heart failure. A retired officer who had served under him in the early 1980s described him to PTI as professional, knowledgeable and skillful. His funeral was held at St Andrew's Church in Bandra.
Kulkarni told the story of the case in his memoir, Footprints on the Sands of Crime. His daughter told The Pioneer in 2016 that she understood the scale of the case only after reading the book.
In 1991 the director Sriram Raghavan made Raman Raghav, A City, A Killer, a 70-minute reconstruction for a series of police case films produced by Janak Mehta and Ajit Tolia with the Maharashtra police. It was based on the confession and on Kulkarni's memoir and shot in 10 to 12 days at the places where the killings happened, Scroll.in reported in 2015. Raghubir Yadav played the killer and said he drew on the confession. The series was never distributed.
Anurag Kashyap saw Raghavan's film and later made Raman Raghav 2.0, starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, released on June 24, 2016. It is not a biography. The film is set in 2013 and imagines a fictional killer who calls himself by the old aliases, and a police inspector hunting him, the news agency IANS noted in its review.
Proven in court, and final: the murder of Lalchand Jagannath Yadav and Dular Jaggi Yadav at Chinchavli, Malad, on the night of August 25 to 26, 1968. The conviction was entered in 1969 and confirmed by the Bombay High Court in 1987.
Charged, with no trial ever reported: the other cases registered over the killings of July and August 1968, about ten in all, of which eight were still pending in 1987.
His own claim, never tested: the total of 41 killings, and the killings attributed to him in 1966. No court made any finding about them, and the number of people attacked or killed in 1966 has not been reliably reported.
Contested in court: his mental state. The police surgeon found him sane and fit for trial in 1969; the defense psychiatrist diagnosed chronic paranoid schizophrenia; a special medical board in 1970 found him certifiably insane and unable to make his defense; a board in 1984 called his illness incurable; and by 1987 the prison psychiatrist found him fit. The courts never accepted that he was legally insane at the time of the Malad killings.
The victims in the Malad case: the Supreme Court called them brothers; the High Court in 1970 called them employees of the stable owner.
The arrest: the court records give August 27, 1968; a PTI report of 2020 says September 1968. Accounts of how Fialho recognized him also differ: PTI says he carried the suspect's photograph and noticed a wet umbrella; Indian Masterminds says he did not even have a proper photograph and noticed the man crossing the road too quickly.
The date of death: 1995 (PTI, The Week, HuffPost India) or April 7, 1988 (Scroll.in).
His treatment in police custody: The Week's account that he was beaten and kept hungry before he began to talk was never tested in court.
1950: comes to Bombay from the south and works for some years as a mill hand (Scroll.in).
Before 1968: convicted of theft several times; serves about five years in prison in all.
1965: by his own evidence, already knows of the cash cupboard at the Chinchavli stables.
1966 to 1968: killings of sleeping pavement and hut dwellers later attributed to him by police.
July and August 1968: series of murders in the western suburbs of Greater Bombay; about ten cases later registered against him.
August 13, 1968: borrows an iron bar from a friend; a blacksmith shapes it for him.
August 25, 1968: a woman in Kandivli gives police a description of the suspect's clothes, circulated to all stations.
Night of August 25 to 26, 1968: Lalchand Jagannath Yadav and Dular Jaggi Yadav are killed in a hut at Chinchavli, Malad.
August 27, 1968: arrested at about 8 a.m. in the Bhendi Bazaar area by Sub-Inspector Alex Fialho.
August 29, 1968: identified at a parade by the watchman and his son.
November 11 to 13, 1968: confession recorded before Presidency Magistrate Ram Manohar Devare.
January 16, 1969: admits the Malad killings before an Additional Chief Presidency Magistrate.
June 2, 1969: sessions trial due to open; referred to the Police Surgeon.
June 3 to 23, 1969: observed by Dr. Frankline, who finds him fit for trial.
July 24, 1969: trial judge rules him capable of making his defense.
August 4, 1969: gives evidence on oath.
August 5, 1969: interviewed by the defense psychiatrist, Dr. Patkar.
August 13, 1969: convicted of murder and sentenced to death; the case is referred to the High Court.
October 22, 1969: asks to attend the confirmation hearing.
January 8 and 9, 1970: interviewed by the court-appointed lawyers.
January 14, 1970: High Court orders a special medical board.
February 28, 1970: Dr. Chandorkar reports paranoid schizophrenia.
July 3, 1970: High Court finds him unable to make his defense and postpones the confirmation case; he is held at Yeravda.
February 19, 1975: Supreme Court of India dismisses the State's appeal.
1984: medical board reports incurable schizophrenia; he later improves.
August 4, 1987: Bombay High Court confirms the conviction, sets aside the death sentence and imposes life imprisonment.
April 7, 1988 (Scroll.in) or 1995 (PTI): dies of kidney failure at Sassoon Hospital, Pune.
1991: Sriram Raghavan's film Raman Raghav, A City, A Killer is made.
June 24, 2016: Raman Raghav 2.0 is released.
November 13, 2020: Alex Fialho dies in Mumbai, aged 92.