On the night of July 14, 2015, a six-year-old girl in Begumpur, on the northwestern edge of Delhi, went out to a field near her home to relieve herself. "She had gone to relieve herself. She did not return," her mother later told NDTV. Her family reported her missing at the Begumpur police station, and during the search that followed her body was found in an abandoned building nearby.
Two days later Delhi Police arrested a 24-year-old laborer named Ravinder Kumar. Within a week, officers were telling reporters that he had confessed to sexually assaulting and killing not only that girl but more than 30 children across the outer districts of the capital and beyond, starting in 2008. The senior officer on the case said he was "deeply shaken from inside."
What courts have decided is narrower. As of September 2025, two Delhi judges had convicted Kumar in two cases: the July 2015 killing in Begumpur, and the April 2014 killing of a girl of about two and a half in Samaypur Badli. He received life imprisonment in each. Everything else attributed to him rests on his statements to police, as police described them to the press, and on cases that were registered but whose outcomes have not been reported. The two categories are not the same thing.
Ravinder Kumar came from Kasganj district in Uttar Pradesh, according to most reports, including the Indian news agencies IANS and ANI. The Caravan magazine, which interviewed his father in 2015, and the news site OneIndia in one report gave his home district as Badaun, which borders Kasganj. ANI and the Hindi channel Aaj Tak reported that he came to Delhi in 2008, at about eighteen, looking for work, from a laboring family: his father was a plumber and his mother a domestic worker. Dawn, citing police, reported that he had studied up to the sixth grade and had worked as a driver and laborer.
His father, Brahmanand, told The Caravan that the family had lived in the Jain Nagar and Sukhbir Nagar areas of outer Delhi for more than two decades before moving to Utsav Vihar in July 2015. That account does not fit easily with the reports that Kumar himself arrived in 2008, and the sources do not resolve the difference. Brahmanand had four sons. At the time of his arrest Kumar was working for a bus operator from Sukhbir Nagar named Sunny, and he was described variously as a bus cleaner, a laborer and a cleaner for a transport contractor.
Police and later court coverage repeatedly described heavy drinking and drug use. Asked by NDTV in July 2015 why he had done what he was accused of, Kumar said, as reported by AFP and The National: "I lose control over my mind after consuming excessive alcohol." He also told the channel, "I killed them to avoid getting detected." Reports at the time of his 2023 sentencing, citing police, said he worked during the day, drank or took drugs in the evening, and then walked long distances through the city at night, sometimes as far as 40 kilometers, through slums and construction sites where the children of poor working families played or slept outside without supervision.
The first time Kumar came to police attention in a case of this kind was in June 2014. According to The Caravan, a seven-year-old boy was taken from Jain Nagar on the night of June 3, 2014, sexually assaulted and left in a septic tank in a building under construction, with a wound to his throat. Police found him and he survived. The case was handled by the Begumpur police.
Kumar was arrested along with two others, a man named Dharmender and a juvenile. Dharmender later told The Caravan that he and Kumar had been drinking together on June 3, and that police had beaten him and the juvenile before they named Kumar. Kumar told a court that he had been asleep at home that night.
On May 20, 2015, Kumar was granted bail. Police later said this happened because the officers handling the case did not know what else he had done. Fewer than two months later he was in custody again. What became of the 2014 boy's case has not been reported.
Two months before the boy was attacked, on April 13, 2014, a girl of about two and a half disappeared from her home in Samaypur Badli at around 6:30 in the evening. According to the court's findings as reported by the Press Trust of India in 2025, she was last seen with Kumar between 7:30 and 8 that evening. Her body was found nearby a few hours later. The postmortem found asphyxia and a head injury.
The case was registered at the Samaypur Badli police station. It did not come to trial for more than a decade, and it is the second of the two cases in which Kumar now stands convicted. The reports do not name her or describe her family.
The girl who disappeared on July 14, 2015, was six years old. Her parents filed a missing complaint the same night, and an FIR was registered at Begumpur police station. Her body was found in an abandoned or under-construction building. The Caravan places it in Jain Nagar, a short distance from where the boy had been found the year before; the girl's father told the magazine that people used the building to drink and take drugs. Delhi Police said she had been killed after being sexually assaulted.
Police said the first lead came from a driving license found near her body. According to IANS, as published by The News Minute, and to reports collected by International Business Times India, it belonged to Sunny, Kumar's employer, who was at that point being questioned at the Kanjhawala police station in a separate matter. Sunny told police that on July 13 he had been assaulted and robbed, and that his motorcycle, papers, phone and money were taken. He named Kumar, Kumar's brother Sunil and a juvenile. Sunil was later jailed in that case, according to The Caravan.
Both sides of that fight had grievances. Kumar's family told The Caravan that Sunny had raped Kumar's mother and that the attack was revenge. Sunny's mother denied the accusation and said Kumar's father had demanded money. DCP Vikramjit Singh told the magazine the relationship between Sunny and Kumar's mother had been consensual. None of this was tested in a court in any source opened.
AFP and The National reported a different detail: that police found Kumar's own identity card at the scene. Later ANI reports said the arrest followed days of examining CCTV footage from the Sukhbir Nagar bus stand in Rohini. The accounts may describe different strands of the same search; the sources do not reconcile them. Singh told reporters: "We immediately formed several teams and managed to trace him." Kumar was arrested on Thursday, July 16, 2015. The Caravan says he was picked up at his home in Sukhbir Nagar; The News Minute, citing IANS, says he was arrested in the Kanjhawala area after a manhunt.
Kumar was questioned in police custody for about a week. On Sunday, July 19, police told a press conference that he had confessed to the Begumpur killing and to at least fourteen other cases since 2008. "We specifically arrested Ravinder Kumar over the assault and murder of a six-year-old girl," Singh, the Deputy Commissioner of Police for Outer Delhi, told AFP. "After we realised that he had previously been arrested in a similar case, we interrogated him." He was careful about the rest: "We have the evidence to link him to his present arrest, but it could be a long investigation process for other claims," he said, because Kumar gave only a broad time frame and did not know exactly where some of the attacks had taken place.
That caution did not last long in public. The Quint, citing the Hindustan Times, reported on July 19 and 22 that Kumar had admitted to 38 cases in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. On Monday, July 20, officers took him to Narela, Bawana and Alipur, places he had named. On Tuesday, July 21, Singh told IANS that the number had passed 30. "I am deeply shaken from inside," he said. "I cannot express in words what all I am going through." He added: "I am myself monitoring the case. The investigations till now suggest that the toll might reach 40." Delhi Police formed a Special Investigation Team, and OneIndia reported that it would look for evidence in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh as well.
As relayed by Singh to IANS, Kumar's account ran as follows. All of it is his confession as described by police; none of these cases, other than the two later tried, has resulted in a conviction in any source opened.
2008. His first victim, he said, was the daughter of a laborer at a Delhi Metro construction site, whom he said he killed when he was about seventeen. The Caravan places this at a construction site in Majri Gaon, Karala. It was never reported to police, and no record of it was found.
2009. He said he took a laborer's son from Vijay Vihar, assaulted him and strangled him. A case was registered at the time, according to IANS, but it did not proceed for lack of witnesses and evidence.
2010 and 2011. International Business Times India, citing Indian papers, said police linked him to a 2010 case in Mundka and a 2011 killing in Kanjhawala; IANS listed two crimes in Kanjhawala and Mundka in 2011.
2012. He said he had targeted two fourteen-year-olds known to a relative in Aligarh, and that he let them go after they promised to stay silent. Dawn, citing Indian papers, said he had abused five children in Aligarh, one of whom died. The Quint reported that he picked out a photograph of a girl from Samaypur Badli whom he said he had killed in 2012, whose body had been found in a building under construction about fifty meters from her home.
2013. He said he committed two crimes in Noida while working as a cleaner for a transport contractor.
2014. Dawn, citing Indian papers, said he admitted two crimes in Samaypur Badli and the attack on the boy in Begumpur.
Singh said Kumar went through poor colonies in the afternoon or early hours looking for children playing outside or near toilets, and lured them with sweets or money. "If they refused, he would simply gag and pick them up," he said. Police said Kumar told them he killed eleven of the children because they resisted or threatened to tell. "In exceptional cases, if the victim agreed not to reveal the matter to anyone, Kumar would let him or her go," Singh said. International Business Times India reported, from Indian press accounts, that Kumar had told police a film about a serial killer of children had influenced him; the film was not named.
Police began going back through five years of missing-child complaints in Vijay Nagar, Bawana, Narela, Alipur, Begumpur, Kanjhawala, Samaypur Badli and other neighborhoods to see which might belong to him. "We are verifying all his claims. The connected FIRs and families are being identified," Singh said. Several officers and reporters compared the case to the Nithari killings in Noida, uncovered in 2006, in which the parents of missing children from a poor neighborhood had said the police did not take their reports seriously.
On Thursday, July 23, 2015, Kumar was produced at the Rohini court complex. OneIndia reported that lawyers struck him inside the courthouse. Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Yadav sent him to fourteen days of judicial custody. Kumar told the judge he feared for his life in jail; the judge told him to raise it with the jail superintendent, according to IANS.
The Caravan's reporter, Ishan Marvel, followed the case from August to early October 2015 and found the confession harder to pin down than the July headlines suggested. Inspector Dahiya, who was handling the Begumpur case, said Kumar had confessed after "sustained interrogation through psychological means," which he did not explain. Police took Kumar to the places he described and asked residents whether his accounts were true; in one Noida case, they asked people working in nearby fields whether a body had been found. Kumar refused a test identification parade. Police said they might use DNA profiling and psychological mapping where evidence fell short. They had not obtained a judicial confession, and judges had refused to let them take him into custody outside the National Capital Region.
The counts given to the magazine did not agree. Police said Kumar had confessed to 28 crimes and that they had confirmed his involvement in twelve. A magistrate said fifteen cases had been marked against him. Kumar's lawyer said there were only three active matters. Dahiya spoke of about forty crimes against children.
Specific cases were uneven. In Kanjhawala, where Kumar was a suspect in the 2011 rape and killing of a three-year-old girl, the investigating officer said there were almost no witnesses or evidence and that a DNA report from the forensic laboratory in Rohini was still pending. In Hathras, in Uttar Pradesh, Kumar had confessed to a crime that local police said they had already closed, with the victim's father arrested in 2013; the Additional Superintendent of Police there said Delhi Police had never contacted them. Other cases he described, in Bahadurgarh, Noida and Ajronda in Faridabad, had never been reported at all. Asked about unreported cases, Additional DCP Chauhan, who led the team, said: "What can we do if the crimes were not reported?"
In the Begumpur case, the evidence was firmer. Dahiya told The Caravan on September 25, 2015, that DNA results confirmed Kumar's guilt, and the chargesheet was filed on September 30. "In my case, he will definitely be hanged," he said.
Abhishek Shrivastava, a lawyer, took Kumar's case without fee on August 5, 2015. He told The Caravan that the confessions had been obtained by torture, that the fight with Sunny was real but everything else had been fabricated, and that the eight witnesses in the 2014 boy's case had no legal value. Kumar's father alleged that his son had been given electric shocks in custody, and that he was being charged in cases that had already been solved and for which other people were in prison. Kumar told the court that he was innocent, that he had only been in fights, and that he had been threatened and tortured. No report describes those allegations being tested. Shrivastava was still representing Kumar at his sentencing eight years later.
The Begumpur trial took nearly eight years. On Saturday, May 6, 2023, a court at the Rohini complex convicted Kumar of kidnapping, rape and murder of the six-year-old girl, under the Indian Penal Code and Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. Vikramjit Singh, by then an Additional Commissioner of Police, told ANI: "Justice delivered finally. So many innocent young souls can rest in peace now." His statement went further than the court had: the verdict covered one child.
Sentencing was delayed because the court had not yet received a report on Kumar's income and assets. At the hearing, Additional Public Prosecutor Vinit Dahiya asked for the maximum punishment. Shrivastava, for the defense, told the court that Kumar had been convicted in this matter, that he had an earlier conviction, and that another case was pending trial. The reports do not identify that earlier conviction.
On Thursday, May 25, 2023, Special Judge (POCSO) Sunil Kumar sentenced him to rigorous life imprisonment, meaning imprisonment for the rest of his natural life, with the sentences under IPC sections 302, 363, 366 and 201 to run concurrently, and fines totaling 50,000 rupees. The prosecution had asked for death. The judge declined, citing "lingering or residual doubts" in the case, and found that it did not fall in the "rarest of the rare" category that Indian courts reserve for capital punishment. He also wrote that the crime was "a cold-blooded rape and murder," "an act of a predator" that had shaken society's conscience, and that the convict deserved no leniency or sympathy. He noted signs of struggle at the scene, showing that the girl had resisted. The court directed the District Legal Services Authority to pay her parents 15 lakh rupees, 1.5 million rupees, as full and final compensation.
On Saturday, August 23, 2025, Additional Sessions Judge Amit Sahrawat convicted Kumar of kidnapping and murder in the April 2014 Samaypur Badli case, under sections 363 and 302 of the Indian Penal Code. Kumar was then about thirty-five. The prosecution case relied mainly on the "last seen" principle: Kumar was the last person seen with the child before she died. The court found that the prosecution had produced solid evidence and that the intent to kill was clear. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer with more than 25 FIRs against him for kidnapping, raping and killing children. The court said his past involvement in similar offenses was not substantial evidence in this case, though it could be considered to some extent. The PTI report says rape was among the prosecution's charges but describes the conviction as one for kidnapping and murder.
At the sentencing hearing, Chief Public Prosecutor Aaditya Kumar asked for the death penalty. He called Ravinder a "serial killer" with nearly 30 similar cases registered against him and a "psychopath" beyond reform. On September 16, 2025, Judge Sahrawat sentenced him to life imprisonment, holding that a capital sentence was not justified in this instance. Devdiscourse's summary of the ruling said the court had taken into account his past acquittals in related cases; the article itself gave no details of them.
As of the September 16, 2025 sentencing report, Ravinder Kumar was serving life imprisonment in the Begumpur case and had received a second life sentence in the Samaypur Badli case. No appeal in either case had been reported, nor any further verdict in his other cases. Nor had anyone reported the outcome of the 2014 case of the boy found in the septic tank, which was pending in 2015.
Proven in court: Kumar was convicted of the kidnapping, rape and murder of a six-year-old girl in Begumpur in July 2015, and of the kidnapping and murder of a girl of about two and a half in Samaypur Badli in April 2014. In both cases the court refused the death penalty.
Charged, outcome not reported: the June 2014 attack on a seven-year-old boy in Jain Nagar, in which Kumar was arrested with two others. A sentencing report in 2025 referred to past acquittals in related cases, without naming them; the defense said in 2023 that he had an earlier conviction, also without naming it.
Confessed, as relayed by police: more than 30 rapes and killings of children from 2008 to 2015 in Delhi, Noida and western Uttar Pradesh. The figure moved from about 15 on July 19, 2015, to 38 in the Hindustan Times account cited by The Quint, to more than 30 and possibly 40 on July 21. Police told The Caravan in 2015 that they had confirmed twelve. Some cases had never been reported; at least one, in Hathras, had already been closed with another person arrested. Kumar's lawyer and family said the confessions were extracted by torture. Kumar denied the charges in court in 2015.
Disputed detail: the case's first lead is variously reported as Sunny's driving license, Kumar's own identity card and CCTV footage from a bus stand. Reports differ on where he was arrested, on whether he came from Kasganj or Badaun, and on his age.
None of the children in this case is named in the reports. What the reports say about them is brief: they were from poor families, many the children of laborers living in slum colonies or on construction sites at the edge of the city, and most were young. The girl from Begumpur was six and had gone out to a nearby field at night when she disappeared. The girl from Samaypur Badli was about two and a half and was taken from her home in the early evening. The boy from Jain Nagar was seven and lived. The first child Kumar described, a laborer's daughter on a Metro construction site in 2008, was never reported missing, and no one has been able to say who she was.
Police reviewed five years of missing-child reports across outer Delhi in 2015 to find families whose cases might be connected. The results of that review were not published in any source opened.
2008: Kumar comes to Delhi from Uttar Pradesh, by most accounts aged about 18. He later told police his first killing was that year.
2009: A laborer's son from Vijay Vihar is killed; Kumar later confesses to it, per police. The case had been registered but did not proceed.
2011: Rape and killing of a three-year-old girl in Kanjhawala; Kumar later named as a suspect.
April 13, 2014: A girl of about two and a half disappears from her home in Samaypur Badli and is found dead nearby.
June 3, 2014: A seven-year-old boy is attacked in Jain Nagar and found alive in a septic tank. Kumar and two others are arrested.
May 20, 2015: Kumar granted bail in the boy's case.
July 13, 2015: Kumar's employer, Sunny, is assaulted and robbed.
July 14, 2015: A six-year-old girl goes missing in Begumpur; her body is found in an abandoned building.
July 16, 2015: Kumar arrested.
July 19-21, 2015: Police say he has confessed to at least 15, then more than 30, killings since 2008. A Special Investigation Team is formed.
July 23, 2015: Struck by lawyers at the Rohini courthouse; remanded to judicial custody.
August 5, 2015: Abhishek Shrivastava takes up his defense.
September 30, 2015: Chargesheet filed in the Begumpur case.
May 6, 2023: Convicted in the Begumpur case.
May 25, 2023: Sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment for the rest of his natural life; 15 lakh rupees compensation ordered for the girl's parents.
August 23, 2025: Convicted of kidnapping and murder in the 2014 Samaypur Badli case.
September 16, 2025: Sentenced to life imprisonment; death penalty refused.