The Stoneman is a name given by the popular English-language print media of

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

to an unidentified

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

who murdered at least 13 sleeping homeless people in Calcutta in 1989. The name is also given to the perpetrator of a similar series of murders in

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

from 1985 to 1988. It has been speculated that these were the work of the same person, who could have been responsible for as many as 26 murders. The Stoneman was blamed for thirteen murders over six months (the first in June 1983), but it was never established whether the crimes were committed by one person or a group of individuals. The

Calcutta Police The Kolkata Police Force (KPF) is one of the two presidency police forces of the Indian state of West Bengal. Kolkata Police has the task of policing the metropolitan area (apart from Bidhannagar and New Town, which are served by the Bidhannaga ...

also failed to resolve whether any of the crimes were committed as a copycat murder. To date, no one has been charged with any of the crimes; all thirteen cases remain unsolved.

Bombay killings

The first hint of a

serial-killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

who was targeting homeless ragpickers and beggars in India came from

. Starting in 1985, and lasting well over two years, a series of twelve murders were committed in the

Sion Sion may refer to * an alternative transliteration of Zion People * Sion (name) or Siôn, a Welsh and other given name and surname, including a list of people and fictional characters with the name * Shion or Sion, a Japanese given name Plac ...

and

King's Circle King's Circle (station code: KCE) is a railway station on the Harbour line of the Mumbai Suburban Railway network. King's Circle and Matunga stations are next to each other albeit the latter is on the Central line. It is named after the King' ...

locality of the city. The criminal or criminals' mode of operation was simple: first they would find an unsuspecting victim sleeping alone in a desolate area. The victim's head was crushed with a single stone weighing as much as 30 kg. In most cases, the victims' identities could not be ascertained since they slept alone and did not have relatives or associates who could identify them. Compounded to this was the fact that the victims were people of very simple means and the individual crimes were not high-profile. It was after the sixth murder that the Bombay Police began to see a pattern in the crimes. A homeless waiter survived one of the Stoneman’s attacks and managed to escape to report it to police, However, in the dimly lit area of Sion where he was sleeping, he had not been able to get a good look at his assailant. Shortly afterwards, in 1987, a ragpicker was hacked to death in the adjoining suburb of

Matunga Matunga (Marathi pronunciation: aːʈuŋɡaː is a locality in the heart of Mumbai City towards downtown Mumbai. It is serviced by the Matunga Road station on the Western line, Matunga station on the Central Line and King's Circle station on ...

. Even though the police and the media suspected the Stoneman killer, no evidence linking the incidents was ever found. In the middle of 1988, the killings suddenly stopped. The case remains unsolved.

Summer of 1989 in Calcutta

Whether or not the Bombay killings were linked to the Calcutta "Stoneman" killings has never been confirmed. However, the similarity in the instrument, choice of victims, execution, and the time of the attacks suggests the assailant(s) was familiar with the Bombay episodes, if not the same killer himself. The first victim in Calcutta died from injuries to the head in June 1989. Twelve more murders attributed to the Stoneman were reported within the following six months. All of the murdered were homeless pavement-dwellers who slept alone in dimly lit areas of the city. Most of the murders took place in central Calcutta, adjoining the

Howrah Bridge The Howrah Bridge is a balanced cantilever bridge over the Hooghly River in West Bengal. Commissioned in 1943, the bridge was originally named the New Howrah Bridge, because it replaced a pontoon bridge at the same location linking the cities ...

. Because the murderer killed victims by dropping a heavy stone or concrete slab, the police assumed that the assailant was probably a tall, well-built male. However, in the absence of any eyewitness description, no confirmed physical description ever became available. Police were deployed into various parts of the city, and numerous arrests were made. After a spell of arrests in which a handful of "suspicious persons" were detained for questioning, the killings stopped. However, citing a lack of evidence, the suspects were released into the public. The crimes remain unsolved.

Stoneman in Guwahati

Similar incidents were reported in

Guwahati Guwahati (, ; formerly rendered Gauhati, ) is the biggest city of the Indian state of Assam and also the largest metropolis in northeastern India. Dispur, the capital of Assam, is in the circuit city region located within Guwahati and is the ...

city of

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

state during February 2009.

Film adaptations based upon the events

Producer Bobby Bedi produced a film titled ''

The Stoneman Murders ''The Stoneman Murders'' is a 2009 Indian neo-noir crime thriller film based on the real life Stoneman serial killings that made headlines in the early 1980s in Bombay. The helpless victims of the mystery killer, who was never caught, were foo ...

'' based on these incidents. The film released on 13 February 2009, starring

Kay Kay Menon Krishna Kumar Menon (born 2 October 1966), better known by the stage name Kay Kay Menon, is an Indian actor who works predominantly in Hindi cinema, and also in Gujarati, Tamil, Marathi and Telugu cinema. Early life Menon was born in a Nair fa ...

and

Arbaaz Khan Arbaaz Salim Abdul Rashid Khan (born 4 August 1967) is an Indian actor and film producer who primarily works in Bollywood, Hindi cinema, in addition to Telugu language, Telugu and Malayalam, Malayalam cinema. Since making his debut in 1996, h ...

, and written and directed by Manish Gupta. Gupta said that his story for the movie is 40% fact and 60% fiction. The movie depicts the killings to be a part of a religious ritual being conducted by a policeman, with the actual perpetrator left open to interpretation at the end. In 2011, a Bengali film named ''

Baishe Srabon ''Baishey Srabon'' (''22 Shey Srabon'') is a 2011 Indian Cinema of West Bengal, Bengali neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Srijit Mukherji. it was his second film. The cast consists of Prosenjit Chatterjee, Parambrata Chatterje ...

'' was released, directed by Srijit Mukherjee. The plot of the movie revolved around the same mysterious serial killings in Kolkata, which took place during the period of 1989. In the movie, the murderer is shown to choose victims mostly from the poor and homeless sector of society; either sex workers, drug users or street people. However, the film ends with the serial killer shooting himself after confessing to all his crimes: a clear deviation from the facts.

References

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