New Delhi: Ravinder Kumar's horrifying crimes will send chills down anyone's spine. The ‘Toffee Serial Killer’ gained infamy as one of the most notorious killers of Delhi in recent memory. His case came to light eight years ago, when he was caught for the rape and murder of a six-year-old girl. He had killed more before that, according to his own confession, as claimed by the Delhi Police investigating the case.  


The Rohini court in Delhi handed down a life imprisonment sentence to Ravinder Kumar in May 2023. Judge Sunil Kumar of the additional sessions court ruled that the rape and murder of the six-year-old in 2015 was an "act of a predator", and emphasised that there should be no leniency in this matter. "I firmly believe that the actions of the convict were those of a predator, which have deeply disturbed society. Given the circumstances, the accused does not warrant any leniency," media reports quoted the judge as saying. 


Consequently, Ravinder, who has been in custody since 2015, received a life imprisonment sentence. The court also ordered the District Legal Services Authority to compensate them with Rs 15 lakh.


The investigation into Ravinder's heinous crimes began in July 2015 when the police were looking into the disappearance of the six-year-old girl from her house in Dehi’s Begumpur locality. His arrest from Kanjhawala led the authorities to discover the girl's lifeless body. During interrogation, he confessed to raping and strangling her to death. 


Shockingly, according to reports, Ravinder had been engaging in such acts since the age of 17, often travelling long distances, up to 40 kilometres at times, scouring construction sites and slums in his search for victims. His modus operandi involved luring children with 10-rupee notes and candies before leading them to secluded locations to execute his nefarious plans.


The Attraction Of Candies 


One might consider children foolish for not grasping the simple adage, "don't take candies from strangers". But then children do believe in Santa Claus and tooth fairies. Resisting the allure of sugary delights is difficult. And Ravinder’s victims were no different. 


His motive wasn't to extort money from their parents. Begumpur, the area from where Ravinder had picked up his last victim, was infested with crime but inhabited by low-income families. He always lurked in such pockets to hunt vulnerable children of parents with meagre means, just to satiate his twisted desires, the investigators found.


A year ago, in April 2014, a boy was found in the same locality with a slit throat. He had been raped too. But the boy survived miraculously, and his statement had led the police to Ravinder. He was sent to jail, The New Indian Express reported, adding that he got bail as an under-trial prisoner the next year, only to go back to his old ways.  


Speaking to Times of India, retired assistant commissioner of police Jagminder Singh Dahiya, who was posted at Begumpur police station in 2015, described Ravinder as not only a paedophile, but also a necrophile. 


A 2015 report in The Hindu described how a drunk Ravinder felt drawn only to “little children”, and that he would strangle most of them before having sex with their lifeless bodies. “I would kill them so that they did not cry and scream when I raped them. Killing them first saved me from being caught,” the report quoted Ravinder as saying during a conversation with the newspaper.


"Many of the victims were from rural areas and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. That's why he managed to operate for so long," Dahiya told ToI.


The Missing Girl And The Investigation 


That July day in 2015, Pushpa Devi and Santosh Kumar’s 6-year-old daughter had gone to the fields nearby to answer nature’s call, but did not return home. She had been gone for 20 hours when the parents reported the matter to the police.  


Soon, a search began, and the police stumbled upon an abandoned building, merely a stone-throw away from the hutment where the family lived. 


Recalling the case he investigated as an inspector posted at Begumpur police station, Dahiya recalled while speaking to The New Indian Express: “When we reached the area, we found the body of the girl on the ground floor of an abandoned building. She was dead…”


The six-year-old had been brutally assaulted and raped. Dahiya recalled how “horrifying” it was to see a little child “profusely bleeding from her private parts”. 


The police started a murder investigation, and launched a hunt for her killer. 


The police had found a driving licence on the first floor of the abandoned building where the body of the girl was recovered from. The document belonged to one Sunny, who immediately became the prime suspect. But there was a surprise in store for the police when they reached him.


Sunny was traced to a local hospital, and it was learnt that he had been thrashed the same day the 6-year-old was killed, the TNIE report cited above said, quoting Dahiya.


It was learnt that Sunny had been thrashed by three men who had also robbed him. The police soon found the three men and one of them was a young Ravindra Kumar, aged 23 years at the time. 


The TNIE report said Ravinder worked under Sunny as a helper in 2014, and had some past enmity with him because of which he thrashed him and deliberately dropped the driving licence at the other crime spot to implicate him. 


Ravinder Kumar And His Crimes


According to the police, Ravindra was from Uttar Pradesh who worked as a daily wage labourer. He moved to Delhi at an early age in search of a better life. His father was a daily wage labourer in UP’s Kasganj but later became a plumber, while his mother worked as a domestic help, the ToI report quoted above said, adding that Ravinder quit studies after Class VI. After doing odd jobs to make a living, he began working as a labourer. 


After his arrest in 2015, then DCP of Outer district Vikramjit Singh, who is now additional commissioner (New Delhi range), recognised Ravinder as the same person who was arrested a year ago for a similar crime in Begampur, though the boy survived.


Ravinder immediately confessed to killing the 6-year-old too, reports said. But that didn't surprise the police. His unending rant did. An “absolutely remorseless” Ravinder gave minute details of all the crimes he committed since 2008.


“...he remembered the details of every single crime he had committed: the place, the month, almost everything,” Singh recalled while speaking to TNIE.


While the number differs in different media reports, Ravinder allegedly claimed to have sexually assaulted or murdered 36 to 38 children below the age of 14 between 2008, when he was 17 years old, and 2015. Initially, the police were sceptical of his statements, but their doubts were dispelled by his vivid and accurate descriptions of the incidents.


According to the police, his crimes followed a consistent pattern. He would consume alcohol, search for underage victims, strangle them using only three fingers, and then commit sexual assault. 


Ravinder’s first victim, as claimed by the police citing his confession, was a labourer's girl child who he had picked from a Delhi Metro construction site. The police found no record of the crime because it was not reported, an IANS report said.


Since he was able to dodge the police the first time, it emboldened Ravinder. He kidnapped a labourer’s son from Vijay Vihar in 2009, and raped and strangled him, the report said, adding that a case was registered against him but he was never caught for want of evidence. 


Among his other victims, according to what he told the police, were two children in Kanjhawala and Mundka who he killed in 2011, and two 14-year-olds in Aligarh who he targetted in 2012 but did not kill because they promised to keep quiet about it. In 2013, Kumar allegedly committed two crimes in Noida.


One of his confessions proved instrumental in exonerating a man who was being tried for his daughter's murder, as explained by Singh. “In that case, he described the exact location and date on which he had committed the crime. When I called the Hathras police, they confirmed it and said that the girl’s father was undergoing trial for the killing,” Singh told Hindustan Times.


According to the HT report, Ravinder has been charged in only three cases so far. Despite his “confessions”, the police have no evidence to charge him in the rest of the cases. In 2019, Ravinder was handed out a 10-year term in one case in 2019, while the Begumpur case was the second one, the report said, adding that the third case is pending before a local court.