On trail of city’s own kill bill

Little did the then 39-year-old sub inspector Alex Fialho realise that he is going to make a history of sorts when he left for office on one fine August morning of 1968. It was a time when the entire Mumbai police force was under intense pressure to solve the killings of 42 hutment dwellers in the city's suburbs.

Fialho who lived in the police quarters at Bhendi Bazaar was on his way to his office at Dongri. “Those days I used to carry photographs of the serial killer, Raman Raghav, in my shirt pocket. As I was waiting for a bus, I saw this well-built man in khaki shorts and a long blue bush shirt walking in my direction,” Fialho said.

“Something struck me about the man and I instinctively decided to follow him. As he walked past me, he gave me casual glance as I was in uniform. His glance again drew my suspicion,” he said.

After following him for some distance, Fialho asked the suspect to follow him to a nearby building on the pretext of some work. Fialho observed that Raman was carrying a wet umbrella. As it had not rained in South Mumbai that day, “I asked him where he was coming from and he replied Chincholi (Malad). This strengthened my doubt. He was also carrying a half-rimmed spectacles and a thimble that belonged to a Malad tailor who had been found killed a couple of days ago. Later, I found out that he was going to sell it in chor bazaar,” Fialho said.

“I called up my police station and asked for a jeep. After the jeep came, I asked Raghav to sit in it. He unsuspectingly sat and we drove off to the police station. Without drawing his attention, I checked the photograph I had of the killer and I knew I had the right man. But I did not want to raise an alarm, so I took him to the police station and called in the finger print experts. Once they confirmed that the finger prints matched, I arrested him,” he said. The one thing which struck Fialho about Raman Raghav was his coldness. “He was very cold about his acts. There was no remorse in him for having killed so many people. He said that he had directions from God to do so,” Fialho said. “I spoke to him after his arrest and he said that he killed the victims because he did not want to leave any eye-witnesses behind. Because he was caught in two cases on eye-witness account,” Fialho said.

Fialho, however, refused to comment on the current serial killer. “The police are doing their job. As I am not in the force anymore, it would be unfair on my part to comment on their investigation,” he said.