Bangalore: M Shankar alias Jaishankar, 36 — a rapist and a psycho killer — has a total of 27 rape and murder charges against him. In three of the cases, he was sentenced to 27 years of imprisonment. He is still being tried for the remaining 24 cases in various courts across three states — Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. A psychic patient, he had been in Parappana Agrahara central prisons since 2011.
Jaishankar had escaped from Tamil Nadu police custody on March 2011. He had been arrested on the charges of raping and murdering a 39-year-old woman police constable from an all-woman police station in Kangeyam, Tamil Nadu, on August 23, 2009.
On March 17, 2011, he was produced at the Dharmapuri district combined court in Tamil Nadu in connection with a murder case. When armed reserve police constables M Chinnasamy and Rajavelu were escorting him back to Coimbatore, Jaishankar gave them the slip at a bus stand in Salem.
It led to the police, both in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, putting up notices and posters with Jaishankar’s picture, seeking information about him. They even announced cash prizes for information about the fugitive.
He was finally nabbed on May 4, 2011, when he tried to molest a woman near Bijapur in Karnataka. By then more rape, attempt to rape and murder charges have mounted up against his name at places like Chitrdurga, Tumkur and elsewhere in Karnataka.
Jaishankar, notorious for raping and murdering women, originally hails from Salem district of Tamil Nadu. In 2011, he had become a dread in Chitradurga, Tumkur, Bijapur and Haveri districts, where he used to target single women and rape and murder them.
In Chitradurga alone, he had been involved in the rape and murder of five people. In the first incident, he burnt to death one Rangaswamy by locking him up in a farmhouse while he raped his wife. Then he raped and murdered a single woman at a farm in Guilalu village. He was also charged for rapes and killings at farmhouses in Hiriyur and Molakalmuru.
He was traced at Ilagi village on May 4 where he had an altercation with some villagers and misbehaved with a woman. The angry villagers thrashed him and handed him over to the police. The Bijapur police identified him as Jaishanka, the wanted rapist and psycho killer who was accused of killing as many as seven persons in Tumkur and Chitradurga districts. The police had circulated around 4,000 photographs of Jaishankar across Karnataka. S T Ramesh, the then DG&IGP of the state, used to conduct frequent search operations for Jaishankar, mainly on the national highways.
