Youth who raped, murdered 4 elderly women arrested in UP's Ayodhya

Ayodhya (UP): A 20-year-old man was arrested in Ayodhya for allegedly raping and killing four elderly women in December last year, police said on Wednesday.

The accused, Amarendra, was arrested for killing a 60-year-old woman in Ayodhya's Khusheti village, police said.

Additional SP, Ayodhya, Atul Kumar Sonkar, told PTI that Amarendra, a resident of the Asandhara area of Barabanki district, had been arrested Tuesday night.

During interrogation, Amarendra confessed to having raped and killed three more women in Barabanki in December.

According to police, his first victim was a 60-year-old woman from Khusheti, who had left her home on December 5, 2022. When she did not return till late evening, her family filed a missing person complaint with the police.

Police found her naked body in a field the very next day. The post-mortem revealed that she was raped and strangled.

Police said Amarendra also killed a 62-year-old woman on December 17 and a 55-year-old woman on December 29 in Ibrahimabad and Tatara villages of Barabanki.

“Amarendra, the accused, killed three women in Barabanki and one woman in Ayodhya. He committed the four murders in the same manner -- first, he raped the women and then killed them,” said Sonkar.

The police had released a picture of the suspected killer on social media and six teams of Barabanki police were engaged in the search.

"We are working with police from nearby districts to find out about more such incidents," Sonkar said.