I stay in Pune which today is a bustling metropolis, a vibrant educational , software, automobile and technology hub.

But my blog will take you back , a long time back, actually 47 years ago. Poona as it was called then was a city known for cyclists and pensioners. Poona back then like today was a very cultured and quiet town where people minded their own business and siesta time for the town officially was 1 to 4 pm noon.

In such times of solitude and peace, in the year 1976 (when an already national emergency was on) , something happened, which shook the city to the core .

I am sure most of you will have a bell rung in your mind hearing ‘Joshi Abhyankar Murder Case ‘ .

As a lawyer would say , facts of the case were very horrific and scary

Four young Commercial Arts students without any rhyme or reason became serial killers and held the town of Poona under the psychosis of fear and panic. Till the terror lasted , Poona became a dead City by the time the clock struck 6 pm.Theatres were empty and the citizens of Poona stayed put in their homes and refused to open the door to strangers .

The gang leader of this students gang went by the name of Rajendra Yallapa Jakkal. Jakkal ( then 25 ), and the gang members , Dilip Dnyanoba Sutar (21), Shantaram Khanoji Jagtap (23),and Munawar Harun Shah (21). These students were notorious in the college for their rough and arrogant behaviour and indulged in petty robbery. But none of their college friends or teachers could imagined that the normal students were actually cold blooded murderers and psychopaths who got pleasure and a high killing and robbing innocent strangers

The first execution committed by them was of an unfortunate college friend Prakash Hedge. Prakash was kidnapped and a ransom note sent to his father whose restaurant ‘Vishwa ‘ is still in existence. The father made arrangements for the ransom money and kept the money at the place as directed , but alas his son never returned home. The grieving family even today have not overcome the trauma 47 years ago and are resigned to their fate of suffering.

Prakash was missing as per Police records. Neither was Prakash’s body found nor was he traced for a long time . Jakkal the lynchpin grew confident as none of them were even suspected. This emboldened them . And they made the next devious plan .

The night of 31st October 1976 was as normal as most of his life had been till then for Achyut Joshi and his wife Usha living in a peaceful area of Poona . The murderers forcibly entered into the household of the Joshi’s. They strangulated the couple and started searching the house for valuables. The search seemed futile, till the footsteps of Anand , the teenage son of the now dead couple. After cleaning the house of all the valuables and cash , Anand also met the same fate as his unfortunate parents . Rubber gloves were used by all four so as to not leave behind any fingerprints. They also sprayed strong perfume so as to mislead the sniffer dogs .

Back then the investigation mechanism was pretty simple and rudimentary. First of all , there were no CCTV which could provide some inkling to movement of strangers in and around the victims locality where these cold blooded murders happened. No mobile phones , tracing of location. Further no forensic experts, DNA analysis and phenotyping , carbon dot analysis, block chain to name a few .

Coupled with a shoddy initial police investigation, the criminals spurred into more action. The failed attempt to break in a bungalow in Kolhapur and one in Poona didn’t dishearten nor make them worried that their game may be up .

The criminals were getting frustrated as none of their murders had yielded any substantial gains which they assumed will. They planned and executed one more horrific crime which was a pinnacle of their neurotic disorder and audacity.

The well-known Sanskrit scholar , Patriarch Kashinath Shastri Abhyankar along with his family lived in a quiet lane in a prominent location. On the 1st of December 1976,his son Gajanan was out for dinner with his wife Hirabai, when the murderers struck. The young grandson opened the door thinking his parents were back. But alas, what followed next is so heartrending and tragic that almost a full family with their maid were senselessly exterminated . The gang decamped with valuables and cash. I shudder to even imagine the shock and grief of the son and his wife who opened the door to the carnage of their loved ones.

Poona as a city had never experienced such a terror and the city just recoiled inwards. The police started patrolling at night but the city seemed to have lost its innocence and Poona never went back to what it was before .

The Police machinery still thought these homicides to be disparate ones and the assumption was that the deaths were the result of robbery gone bad. The Police never linked these murders and investigated them in sync . Maybe if that would have happened, innocent lives could have been saved .

The horrific saga continued . The gang murdered one more person called Anil Gokhale before the hands of law finally laid their hands on them. Anil Gokhale was killed by Jakkal. Under the false pretence of giving him a lift , he too was strangulated on 24 th March 1976. After his body was found floating, the Police noticed the nylon rope used for the strangulation. It was then they saw the possibilities of the past murders being linked . It was found during police investigation that the strangulation technique used for all these murders, as well as the specific type of knot tied was the signature to the gang. Police arrested all the four suspects .

Police questioned all four of them separately and each one had a different version from the other . Though young , the suspects were hardened criminals and getting a breakthrough in the investigation seemed difficult.It was only after their accomplice in the murder of Prakash Hedge, Suhas Chandak broke down which then led to the subsequent discovery of Prakash’s body . During the trial, Chandak turned approver while Gore, who was said to be aware of the crimes, was not charged by the police. The heinous nature of all the crimes then unraveled and the city was shocked by the impunity of the criminals and their nonchalant attitude towards the society.

Jakkal, Sutar, Jagtap and Shah were charged for the murders of 10 people. The trial began in May 1978 and the court of sessions judge Waman Narayan Bapat sentenced them to death in September that year.

It took five years for the four to finally face the gallows . In 1983 after appealing up to the supreme court and even for the Presidential pardon, the four finally had a final judgment day with the almighty .

Poona could maybe finally heave a sign of relief and felt secure and went back to being the sleepy city it was . But like in our Marathi lingo we say , ‘Pune Tithe Kay Une ‘ ( There is nothing lacking in my beloved city ) .