Stoneman
unidentified Indian serial killer
The Stoneman is a name given by the popular English-language print media of Calcutta, India to an unidentified serial killer 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 Mumbai from 1983 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 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.
Mumbai killings
The first hint of a serial killer who was targeting homeless ragpickers and beggars in India came from Mumbai. Starting in 1985 and lasting well over two years, a series of twelve murders were committed in the Sion and King's Circle 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.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Stoneman” is unidentified Indian serial killer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Stoneman, unidentified and Indian, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q33150983. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1983, 1988 and 1985.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stoneman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.