What lay hidden in Chhattisgarh’s Purana Kharve
In June 2026, Purana Kharve woke up to discover that 8 murders had been committed over the past 4 months, after two decades of no
In June 2026, Purana Kharve woke up to discover that 8 murders had been committed over the past 4 months, after two decades of no heinous crime in the village. It shocked the 130-140 families that live here, by the banks of the Mahanadi river, in Chhattisgarh’s Balodabazar-Bhatapara district. The Kasdol police found that 46-year-old Ram Sahay Jaiswal, a shopkeeper, had allegedly poisoned 8 men. He had served all his victims alcohol laced with poison. Ram Sahay, now arrested and in judicial custody, says he had planned to kill a few more, found investigators. “For most in the village, he was a frail, meek figure. That helped him avoid suspicion for long. He was a friendly drinking partner for his victims and a socially active family man to boot,” says Kasdol’s sub-divisional police officer Kaushal Kishore Wasnik of the 5-foot-2-inch tall Ram Sahay, who weighs around 50 kg. Wasnik says that masked behind that disposition were “deep insecurities, an inferiority complex, a cynical and suspicious nature,” added to which were life’s circumstances: mounting debt, a failing business, caste dynamics, and insults he endured daily. All this had fuelled revenge against the victims. A shocked village At Budhru Chowk, Ram Sahay’s house is locked and so is the tiny shop in the same compound. The family has moved to Kasdol, a town nearly 7 kilometres from the house, after Ram Sahay’s arrest on June 22. Next to it under a peepal tree, a small group of people stand that includes family members of a couple of victims. They are discussing the infamy Purana Kharve has acquired of late. Among them is Bagh Ram Sahu, who recalls the events of February 20 when his father Buthalu Ram Sahu — chronologically the second of Ram Sahay’s 8 victims — had collapsed in front of the shop. By the time Buthalu Ram was taken to a hospital in Kasdol, he was pronounced dead. “The doctors at the hospital were not suspicious, nor did I have any reason to suspect Ram Sahay. My father had spent many evenings drinking with him. That day Ram Sahay even offered to pay for the rented car in which he was transported,” says Bagh Ram. He dismissed the motive the police gave: that Buthalu Ram had abused Ram Sahay and his caste during a 2023 Assembly polls campaigning event. The police said that one episode had left Ram Sahay nursing a grudge against many members of the Sahu community, a dominant caste group in the village. “That’s fabricated,” Bagh Ram says. “He is using it to justify his crime. I had never heard of any fight. No one else in the village remembers any heated argument between Ram Sahay and my father or the others he killed. And even if he felt bad, was that a good enough reason to kill someone?” he says. But that 2023 argument had a deep psychological impact on Ram Sahay, the police say. The fatal poisoning of Mahetaru Ram Sahu on May 14, the last of the killings, was also purportedly linked to the same episode. Mahetaru’s son Divyanshu is surprised that a man who was regular at Ram Sahay’s shop could be killed in a cold-blooded manner. He shares a phone call recording in which Ram Sahay can be heard inquiring about the possibility of a post mortem of Mahetaru and dissuading the family from seeking investigation into the death. “He said that it would bring him badnaami (disrepute) to him, because my father was last seen at his shop,” says Divyanshu, 19.
The BriefWire