A serial killer in Hyderabad?

Recovery of the bodies of three young men on the city outskirts has raised suspicions about 'serial killings' in the Hyderabad police headquarters limits skirting Hyderabad.

Hyderabad Police Commissioner S Prabhakar Reddy told rediff.com on Sunday that the police would take a couple of more days to crack the case. Some suspects are being interrogated to establish their role in the killings.

"A double murder took place on the night of January 2 and the police found the bodies of two persons -- Mohammed Dastagir (28) and his nephew Mohammed Mustafa (22) in a municipal dumping yard near Babulreddy Nagar locality in Rajendranagar police station limits the next day," Rajendranagar Division Assistant Commission of Police Mahipal Reddy told rediff.com.

"On January 6, we found the body of a murdered person near Aramghar crossroads at Rajendranagar. The body is yet to be identified but the victim appears to be aged around 25 years," the police official said.

Preliminary investigations by the police indicated that all the three victims were killed in a similar manner by the killers who assaulted them and smashed their heads with boulders.

The offenders belonged to a gang, which apparently killed the victims for small amounts after luring them to secluded places by offering liquor.

"We have certain information. We are still working on definite clues. We may unravel the case and establish the motive behind the killings in a day or two," the ACP said.

The police official said, "Nobody is in custody so far. "We have questioned a lot of people -- about 20 to 25 persons -- since the double murders were reported. There is lot of pressure to crack these cases. We are interrogating some suspects," he added.

The ACP, however, made it clear that the three murders were not similar to the serial killings of children in Noida as reported by some Telugu TV news channels. "The media is weaving many stories," he said, referring to media reports that the victims were sexually assaulted before they were killed, that a duo were in police custody and that they had confessed to killing 13 persons, including two women, in the last one year.

The police are trying to find out whether these three killings are connected with other unidentified bodies of victims found in the area over recent weeks.