After his arrest for raping and murdering a six-year-old girl in July 2015, Ravinder Kumar admitted to raping and killing at least 30 more children across Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh over an eight-year period. However, what astounded investigators the most was the “vivid and accurate” descriptions of these crimes that he remembered, officers who were associated with the case said on Thursday, a day when a Delhi court sentenced him to life in prison.

Vikramjit Singh, who is currently posted as the additional commissioner of police in the New Delhi Range, was the deputy commissioner of police (outer), from where Ravinder was arrested in 2015. Singh, who had interrogated him, said, “Ravinder is a cold-blooded killer with no sense of guilt or remorse.”

According to the officer, Ravinder’s accurate and graphic details of his various crimes led to the acquittal of a man in UP’s Hathras, who had been accused of killing and raping his daughter.

“Among crimes he confessed to was the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl in Hathras in 2013. In that case, Ravinder described the exact location and date on which he had committed the crime. When I called the Hathras police, they confirmed the details, and said the girl’s father was currently under trial for the rape-murder,” said Singh, adding that Ravinder’s revelation eventually helped to acquit the Hathras man.

However, for Singh, the confession held a darker meaning. “This meant that Ravinder wasn’t bluffing while admitting to his involvement in more than 30 crimes,” he said.

Originally from Kasganj in UP, Ravinder told investigators that he moved to Delhi in 2007, aged just 16. By 2008, he said, he had begun targeting children — usually below the age of 10 years, and almost always from impoverished families living at construction sites, said an officer aware of the matter.

According to the officer, Ravinder told police that before attacking children, he would get intoxicated on country-made liquor. “He told us he lost all his senses after that and felt attracted to children. He would walk for several kilometres at night while hunting for children,” the officer said, declining to be named.

“He was pointing out exact spots, and circumstances, in which he carried out killings six-seven years earlier. But his mere confessions weren’t enough evidence to chargesheet him in all those cases,” the investigator said.

Giving details of his modus operandi based on his statement to police, the officer said that Ravinder would kidnap a child, take him or her to an isolated spot, and use one hand to kill the victim before sexually assaulting the body.

“He killed the children before assaulting them as he didn’t want to get caught due to their cries,” said the officer, adding that Ravinder would dump the bodies in agricultural fields, ponds or forests, and never return to that spot.

Before his 2015 arrest, police said, he was caught only once – for stabbing and sexually assaulting a boy in outer Delhi’s Begumpur. It was a rare case in which Kumar used a weapon, and it was because he was accompanied by two other people. He would go on to get convicted in that case in 2019 and receive a 10-year jail term, said Singh, but was granted bail.