In June 1989 a man was found dead at B.B.D. Bagh in central Calcutta with his head crushed. B.B.D. Bagh is the administrative center of the city and the body lay a short walk from Lalbazar, the headquarters of the Calcutta Police.
Twelve more deaths of the same kind followed within about six months, the last in the early months of 1990. All the victims were homeless and sleeping alone in unlit places, and most of the killings took place in central Calcutta near the approaches to the Howrah Bridge, which supported a theory that the killer was traveling into the city by train.
The Calcutta Police could not establish whether the deaths were the work of one person or several, and could not resolve whether any of them were copycat killings. Officers were put on the sidewalk disguised as vagrants. No fingerprints or forensic material were recovered from any scene. To date nobody has been charged in any of the cases.
The nickname came from the Calcutta press and was applied retrospectively to a similar series in Bombay between 1985 and 1988. The similarity in method and in the choice of victim is the whole of the connection between the two cities; nothing else has ever been shown. This archive records them separately.