Hindi To English The Stoneman Murders
Abele Beardsley
The Stoneman Murders is a 2009 Indian neo-noir crime thriller film based on the real life Stoneman serial killings that made headlines in the early 1980s in Bombay. The helpless victims of the mystery killer, who was never caught, were footpath dwellers in Bombay. They were stoned to death in their sleep. The movie weaves fiction around reality in an attempt to provide answers to the questions around the case. The Stoneman Murders was director Manish Gupta's first full-length feature film.
The serial killer dubbed 'Stoneman' by the media has just claimed his fifth victim and the case is still of little interest to the Bombay police. But to suspended sub-inspector Sanjay Shelar (for custodial death of a gangster) this killer poses an opportunity for reinstation. With the secret aid of his patronizing superior AIG Satam, Sanjay takes up the arduous process of tracking the murderer without any legal assistance. He asks help from an aide constable and friend Kamble whose wife has apparently run away. The official investigator of the case, Inspector Kedar Phadke, clashes incessantly with Sanjay. They, separately, delve deeper into the case, patrolling the city on their own. Sanjay takes the help of his informer Ghanshu who tells him about Mohammed, a cab driver operating only at midnight, whom everyone on the streets is starting to suspect as being the stoneman. Ghanshu is eventually also murdered on the footpath by the Stoneman. The Stoneman is shown to be killing people sleeping on the streets (beggars, workers, sweepers etc.). Another night the Stoneman tries to kill a beggar sleeping on the roadside but is saved by Kedar and some patrolling policemen. Kedar sees Sanjay and now starts to suspect him as the murderer. Sanjay finds that his private investigation room has been visited by the Stoneman as he sees vermilion smeared everywhere in the room. He also learns that Mohammed has run away from the city.
Sanjay contemplates possible danger to his wife Manali and asks her to leave for her village. At the railway station he encounters the Stoneman again, trying to kill another roadside man. Before he can catch him, Kedar with his team arrives and shoots Sanjay in the thigh, thinking him to be the killer. Sanjay escapes and the incident brings him closer to his wife who nurses his wounds. A search is out in the city for Sanjay now, who goes into hiding. He researches and realizes the killer himself is a policeman, from Kusumi Tribe, performing tantric rituals to cure impotency that calls for human sacrifices. He asks his trusted cop Kamble to tell this to AIG Satam, giving his research documents as evidence. In the climax, it is shown that Mohammed was only an ex-convict deployed by Kedar as a decoy to roam the streets at the latter's orders, and Kamble turns out to be the killer Stoneman when Sanjay arranges to meet him. Kamble attacks Sanjay with a stone about to commit his ninth and last murder, but both are saved by the police (Kedar and team). In a trap laid by the police in the hospital, when Kamble sneaks in to kill Sanjay, he is nabbed and the matter is closed. Satam and Phadke decide to hush up the case. Kamble is shot and buried in the jungle by Sanjay at Satam's orders. He tells Sanjay that he cannot be taken back into the police force.
In the end, a tantric is shown in Kamble's village performing a ritual, asking a man to make nine human sacrifices and this time to kill people in Calcutta. The story ends showing killings in Bombay and Calcutta in 1983 and 1987.
The research that went into the scripting of The Stoneman Murders involved an intensive search for newspaper articles dating to 1983 (when the killings took place). The director Manish Gupta and his team combed the Asiatic Library, the Government Archival Library at Elphinstone College, the Times of India archives and the archival departments of Indian Express, Maharashtra Times, Navbharat Times and other newspapers. Before this, the preliminary research done by the director was over the internet where a few articles about the Stoneman had been posted. The dates obtained from the internet were later used to carry out more detailed research in the libraries and newspaper archives.
Before the shooting of the film, the director and his team visited nearly all the known murder sites, like the area surrounding Tilak Hospital in Sion, the Gandhi Market near King's Circle, the area outside Matunga police station, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road in Wadala and one small street in Lalbaug. The visits to these sites were made late at night to enable the creative team to absorb a feel of the area and the eerie late-night ambiance, which was later recreated in the film in terms of location selection, photography and the general styling of the film.
The production team had to re-create the look of 1980s Bombay despite the fact that cars, shops, and advertisements had changed. The pavements where the murders took place were made of black tar unlike the multi-colored jigsaw shaped tiles of today. This restricted the shooting in myriad manners. For the wide shots of pavements, the unit often had to cover half a kilometer of pavement with black tarpaulin sheets to achieve the look of a tar footpath. The unit often waited until the late night before rolling the camera since they needed all modern vehicles off the roads. Often some vehicles remained parked on the road and had to be covered by black tarpaulins. Likewise, the neon hoardings and contemporary advertisements were hidden by 1980s style advertisements and film posters that were sourced out painstakingly by the art director from obscure raddi shops.
Nikhat Kazmi of Times of India gave The Stoneman Murders a 3-star rating out of 5 and praised it for its gripping story and taut performances. "The film has an ample thrill quotient with the shadowy frame of the Stoneman flitting across on one hand and the police department, especially Arbaaz Khan, holding the renegade cop, Kay Kay Menon, as the prime suspect. Once again, Mumbai and its alleys which turn sinister by night, tower prominently as the perfect backdrop of a film which boasts of some high-tension moments. But the real lure is Kay Kay's full-bodied portrayal of the trigger-happy cop who is wedded to his duty, yet doesn't mind a bit of black money."[1]
Nithya Ramani from rediff.com praises TSM: "Writer-director Manish Gupta does a wonderful job in telling the story, which has a very realistic touch. Despite being a murder mystery, Gupta avoids gore and bloodshed, and makes it visually appealing. The story keeps you on the edge of your seat, occasionally sending a chill down your spine."[2]
The Stoneman is a name given by the popular English-language print media of Calcutta, India[1] to an unidentified serial killer[2] 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 1985 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.
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. In most cases, the victims' identities could not be ascertained since they slept alone and did not have relatives or associates who could identify them. Compounded to this was the fact that the victims were people of very simple means and the individual crimes were not high-profile. It was after the sixth murder that the Mumbai Police began to see a pattern in the crimes.
A homeless waiter survived one of the Stoneman's attacks and managed to escape to report it to police, However, in the dimly lit area of Sion where he was sleeping, he had not been able to get a good look at his assailant.
Shortly afterwards, in 1987, a ragpicker was hacked to death in the adjoining suburb of Matunga. Even though the police and the media suspected the Stoneman killer, no evidence linking the incidents was ever found.
Whether or not the Mumbai killings were linked to the Calcutta "Stoneman" killings has never been confirmed. However, the similarity in the instrument, choice of victims, execution, and the time of the attacks suggests the assailant(s) was familiar with the Mumbai episodes, if not the same killer himself.
The first victim in Calcutta died from injuries to the head in June 1989. Twelve more murders attributed to the Stoneman were reported within the following six months. All of the murdered were homeless pavement-dwellers who slept alone in dimly lit areas of the city. Most of the murders took place in central Calcutta, adjoining the Howrah Bridge.[3]
Because the murderer killed victims by dropping a heavy stone or concrete slab, the police assumed that the assailant was probably a tall, well-built male. However, in the absence of any eyewitness description, no confirmed physical description ever became available.
Police were deployed into various parts of the city, and numerous arrests were made. After a spell of arrests in which a handful of "suspicious persons" were detained for questioning, the killings stopped. However, citing a lack of evidence, the suspects were released into the public. The crimes remain unsolved.
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