'Cannibal', 'skull collector' sentenced to life in double murder case

A special court of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday awarded life term to Raja Kolandar alias Ram Niranjan Kol, a former Central Ordnance Depot employee-turned-occult practitioner also accused of cannibalism and skull collection, and his accomplice Bachh Raj Kol in a double murder case dating back to 2000.

- HT Correspondent

LUCKNOW:

The two were convicted for the abduction and murder of businessman Manoj Kumar Singh and his driver Ravi Srivastava in 2000. The court also imposed a penalty of Rs 2.5 lakh each on the duo.

According to district government counsel Manoj Tripathi, the prosecution had sought death penalty, but the court ruled that the case did not meet the criteria for the "rarest of the rare" category due to insufficient evidence. Consequently, it sentenced the two to life imprisonment.

This is the second life term awarded to them 25 years after the crime. Earlier, they were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2012 for murdering a journalist, Dhirendra Singh, in Allahabad (now Prayagraj) in 2000. During that investigation, 14 human skulls labelled with victims' names were exhumed from his pig farm in Pipri village of Prayagraj.