Who was Cyanide Mohan, inspiration behind Vijay Varma's serial killer Anand Swarnakar in Dahaad?

Vijay Varma has been earning rave reviews from audiences and critics for his portrayal of a dreaded serial killer named Anand Swarnakar in the crime drama series Dahaad, which premiered on Prime Video on May 12. Created by Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar, the show stars Sonakshi Sinha, Gulshan Devaiah, and Sohum Shah as cops on the hunt to catch Anand, who murders 20 women.

Vijay Varma's character isn't entirely a fictional one as it draws multiple parallels with the real-life serial killer Mohan Kumar aka Cyanide Mohan, who murdered 20 women in Karnataka between 2003 and 2009. The modus operandi followed by Mohan Kumar and Anand Swarnakar is also identical. While the real-life killings happened in the South Indian state, the makers have set Dahaad in Rajasthan.

Spoiler Alert! It is advisable to not read further if you haven't watched Dahaad yet.

Who was Cyanide Mohan?

Mohan Kumar Vivekanand targeted unmarried women in their mid-20s or early 30 from underprivileged families. After luring them into marrying him, he would spend a night with these innocent women in a hotel. In the morning, Mohan would persuade these women to take contraceptive pills in order to avoid pregnancy. He would lace these pills with cyanide and hence, came to be known as Cyanide Mohan. The twenty dead bodies were found in the public toilets of the bus stands in their wedding outfits without a single piece of jewellery on them. 

The same modus operandi is followed by Vijay Varma's character Anand Swarnakar in Dahaad who targets innocent unmarried women, spends a night with them in a hotel, and gives them cyanide-laced contraceptive pills leading to their deaths. The similarities don't just end here. Just like Anand, Cyanide Mohan was a teacher too with the difference being that Vijay Varma's character teaches Hindi in a girls' college, while the real-life serial killer was a physical education teacher in a primary school. 

Where is Cyanide Mohan now?

Mohan Kumar was arrested in October 2009 from a village on the outskirts of Mangaluru. He is serving life imprisonment at the Hindalga Central Prison in Belagavi after being convicted and sentenced to death in four murder cases and life imprisonment in 15 similar cases. In 2020, he was found guilty of raping and murdering a 25-year-old woman from Kasaragod, which was the last of the twenty cases of murder registered against him.

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