Motilal Sadhu allegedly beheaded a woman last month when she resisted his attempts to molest her
Dev Raj, Patna: Residents of Lakshmipur and neighbouring villages in West Champaran district of Bihar are spending sleepless nights in fear of an axe-wielding sadhu.
Motilal Sadhu allegedly beheaded a woman last month when she resisted his attempts to molest her.
He is said to hide in vast sugarcane fields, bushes or along riverbanks in the area during the day, but emerges wielding an axe at night to roam the deserted village streets, shouting expletives and threatening to kill nine more people.
The threats are enough to terrorise the villagers who scamper to their homes as dusk falls or gather in groups to mount a vigil to ward off any possible untoward incident.
“We carry torches, sticks, spears and mobile phones with us and patrol the streets because the sadhu has been threatening to kill nine people in our village. He has already killed one and we do not want to take any chances,” said Sunny Kumar, a resident of Lakshmipur village, around 250km northwest of Patna.
According to Kumar, the hermit also screams out the names of the people he is going to kill, but often keeps changing them.
Motilal had allegedly tried to molest a woman in Lakshmipur on September 23 while she was cutting grass in a field for her cattle.
She resisted and her children playing nearby raised an alarm, following which he beheaded her with the axe and fled away. The villagers alleged that Motilal was besotted with her.
An FIR has been registered at Chautarwa police station in connection with the killing of the woman. Motilal had earlier tried to sexually assault another woman while she had gone to work at her farm.
He had cut the nose of her father-in-law when he tried to save her, villager said.
Motilal has become a headache for the police, who have labelled him a “psycho”, clever enough to thwart all attempts to nab him for the last two weeks.
“We are not sitting idle. We have been conducting raids to arrest the sadhu, but he takes advantage of the topography of the area to escape. We spotted him once in a sugarcane field and tried to surround him, but he fled using the cover of the tall plants,” Chautarwa station house officer (SHO) Shambhu Sharan Gupta told The Telegraph.
“Another time we tried to corner him, he jumped into a local river. Some policemen also jumped after him, but could not catch him. We will nab him soon,” Gupta added.
The SHO also said Motilal had now tonsured his head and shaved his beard since the police spotted him last.
