Amarjeet Sada: The World’s Youngest Serial Killer

Deep dive 25 March 2024

In 2007, six-month-old Khushboo Devi was taken from her local primary school and bludgeoned to death. When the girl’s killer was later interviewed by the police, he swung his legs in the chair and asked for a biscuit. That killer was Amarjeet Sada, who, at eight years old, was just a child himself. However, it would turn out that Khushboo was actually Amarjeet’s third victim, making him, to date, the world’s youngest serial killer.

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Table of Contents

A Family Matter

Amarjeet Sada was born in 1998. When Amarjeet was 6 years old, the family relocated to the village of Mushahari in the district of Bihar in eastern India. Poverty and unemployment are rife in Mushahari, and to this day, Bihar is one of the poorest states in India.

Amarjeet’s father worked as a farm labourer but his work was never guaranteed. He would travel around the local farms hoping one of them would need help and employ him for the day. Amarjeet’s mother was a stay-at-home mum looking after Amarjeet and the home. And so the family was poor, and money was a constant struggle.

But despite their financial worries, Amarjeet’s parents doted on their only son. Each day, Amarjeet’s mother would draw a black dot on his forehead to give him protection from the evils of the world, completely unaware that it was the world that needed protecting from him.

Despite their poverty, Amarjeet’s parents tried their best to provide him with the things he wanted. But like most small children, Amarjeet could be temperamental. Sometimes he would understand that the family was too poor to buy him new toys, while other times, he would sulk, or throw tantrums. However, Amarjeet’s anger and behavioural issues were getting worse and being noticed, not just by his family, but also by the neighbourhood children.

The community of Musahari was tight-knit, and many of the children, including Amarjeet’s family members, could be found playing together outside on the streets or in the nearby fields climbing trees. However, Amarjeet could be mean to the other children and sometimes physically violent, hitting and kicking them. He would cause trouble, and he was developing a bad reputation. Eventually, Amarjeet refused to play with the other children. He was solitary and introverted, preferring to play alone and be in his own company.

Shortly after moving to Mushahari, Amarjeet’s mother became pregnant. The family were stressed by the financial worry of having another mouth to feed, but they were also excited about the new addition to their family.

One day, Amarjeet’s aunt went to his mother and asked her to take care of her 6-month-old baby for the next month. Amarjeet’s mother was less than thrilled with the idea. She was pregnant herself, and they could hardly feed themselves let alone have an extra mouth to feed. But Amarjeet’s aunt pleaded with her. She had been offered work in the city which she desperately needed to take so she could afford to feed her baby. She would only be away for the month, and she said she would give Amarjeet’s mother some of her wages. So in the end, Amarjeet’s mother agreed, and for the next month, Amarjeet’s cousin came to live with them.

Sometime later, Amarjeet’s mother was looking after the children when she realised she needed to go to the market to buy food. She put her nephew in its cot and told Amarjeet to watch his cousin. She wouldn’t be long. Shortly after his mother left the house, Amarjeet went over to the cot and watched his cousin sleeping peacefully. But he quickly broke his cousin’s slumber as he began violently slapping the child. As the baby began crying louder and louder, Amarjeet would just strike and pinch and scratch his cousin harder and harder, enjoying seeing the baby screaming in pain.

Eventually, Amarjeet got bored of hitting his cousin, so he reached into the cot, wrapped his hands around the baby’s throat, and began to squeeze, tighter and tighter until his cousin lost consciousness. But Amarjeet was not satisfied with what he had done and wanted to see and feel more. So he took his cousin outside to a field and began to smash the baby’s head in with a brick. Only then was Amarjeet satisfied. Amarjeet buried his cousin in a shallow grave and covered the body with grass and leaves.

Amarjeet Sada had just committed his first murder. He was 7 years old.

When Amarjeet’s mother returned home, her nephew wasn’t in the house. She confronted Amarjeet, asking him where his cousin was. And it didn’t take long for Amarjeet to confess to his mother exactly what he had done and where he had hidden the body. Amarjeet showed no remorse and appeared to have very little understanding of the consequences of his actions.

When Amarjeet’s father got home later that day and learned about what his son had done, he went mad at Amarjeet and began to beat him. Amarjeet’s father’s solution was to beat the murderous ways out of his son. But ultimately, it didn’t matter how mad Amarjeet’s parents were, he was their baby boy and they were going to protect him at all costs. They did not want to get the police involved and destroy Amarjeet’s life in the process. After all, they couldn’t bring the baby back.

When the baby’s parents returned to collect their child, they were obviously distraught by what had happened. But Amarjeet’s parents managed to convince them it was an accident and pleaded with them not to get the authorities involved. And they agreed. If something like this got out, the whole family’s reputation could be ruined. Plus, Amarjeet’s father would struggle even more to find someone to employ him. And so the family agreed to cover up what Amarjeet had done. It was deemed a family matter, and the family would deal with the issue privately.

So Amarjeet quite literally got away with murder.

Not too long after the death of her nephew, Amarjeet’s mother gave birth to a baby girl. The family doted on her, but Amarjeet struggled to connect with his new baby sister.

Eight months later, his parents had gone to take a nap and left Amarjeet’s sister alone in her cot. And just as he had done with his cousin, he went up to his sister’s cot, wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed. She was quickly subdued, unable to make a noise and alert the parents as she was being choked to death.

Knowing his sister was dead, Amarjeet then went back to playing with his toys as though nothing had happened.

When Amarjeet’s parents awoke and discovered their daughter dead in her cot, it didn’t take them long to put two and two together. Amarjeet’s mother was beyond herself with grief, and his father reacted angrily as he had before, beating his son to within an inch of his life.

But despite being yelled at and beaten, Amarjeet again did not care about what he had done. His sister’s death meant nothing to him, and he didn’t understand the grief-stricken reactions of his parents.

Some sources say some of the villagers were wary of Amarjeet and even kept their kids away from him. It is unclear at what point the neighbours became aware, although some sources claim that when Amarjeet murdered his sister, there was so much noise in the house with his father beating him and his mother wailing in sorrow that some of the neighbours came rushing over to see what the commotion was. But regardless of whether some of the neighbours knew or not, suspicions were certainly aroused in the village. Two small babies had disappeared, and with the bad reputation Amarjeet had made for himself, people were beginning to suspect Amarjeet’s involvement in the children’s disappearances.

But once again, the family had declared the issue a family matter that they would deal with. And just as before, the family went about their daily routines leaving Amarjeet free to murder again.

Khushboo

In May 2007, a local mother from the village, Chunchun Devi, needed to get some chores done, which was difficult to do with a small baby in tow. Knowing that she wouldn’t be long, she dropped her 6-month-old daughter, Khushboo, at childcare at the local primary school where she believed her daughter would be safe. However, upon returning to the school to collect her, she discovered Khushboo was gone. The school itself was very primitive and did not have any security. None of the staff knew where Khushboo was, and Khushboo was too young to wander off alone.

As Chunchun desperately searched around the village for her missing daughter, she ran into a member of the Sada family who made the shocking revelation that they might know what had happened to her. Sadly, Khushboo’s tiny body was located a little while later in a shallow grave covered with dirt and leaves.

Amarjeet was confronted and openly admitted to killing Khushboo. He even took the villagers to where he had concealed Khushboo’s body. Again, there was no remorse, just a very matter-of-fact confession of guilt. However, this time, the murder of Khushboo took Amarjeet’s crime outside of the home, and his family was no longer able to protect him.

The police were called, and Amarjeet was arrested.

The Confession

According to Bihar police, Amarjeet did not appear nervous. He spoke very little “but smiled a lot”. He had no sense of right and wrong and did not seem to understand the seriousness of what he had done. He showed no remorse and casually asked for biscuits during questioning.

But ultimately, Amarjeet confessed all. He told the police he had taken the sleeping girl from the school. He said he had first tried to strangle her, but her reaction was not satisfying enough. He wanted to see more fear in her face, so he struck her repeatedly with a stone until she was dead. He then buried her in a shallow grave, covering her body with grass and leaves.

He also confessed to the murders of his cousin and sister.

Psychological assessments were carried out. One assessment described Amarjeet as “a sadist who derives pleasure from inflicting injuries” and concluded that his lack of remorse and enjoyment of inflicting pain on others was a case of psychopathy.

He was reportedly diagnosed with conduct disorder, which is characterised by a disregard for others, including antisocial behaviour like rule-breaking, getting into physical fights, stealing, and lying. Children with this disorder may show little sign of guilt or remorse.

Verdict

In June 2007, Amarjeet Sada appeared in court for the murder of Khushboo Devi. He was not charged with the murders of his cousin or sister because, allegedly, his family did not want to press charges against him.

As Amarjeet was under the age of criminal responsibility, he couldn’t be sentenced as an adult. He was sent to a juvenile prison or a psychiatric facility for three years, which was the maximum available to him under Indian law. He was then admitted to a children’s home in the nearby town of Munger to carry out the rest of his sentence.

He was reportedly provided with the medication and treatment he needed.

The exact details of his sentence are unknown, but either way, he was incarcerated for almost ten years until he was released in 2016 when he was 18 years old.

Amarjeet was given a new identity, and to this day, nobody knows where he is.

Theories and Speculation

Because there are so many unknown elements to this case, theories and speculation have attempted to fill in the gaps or explain some of the missing information.

The biggest area of speculation is that Amarjeet did not commit any or all of the murders.

There are two parts to this theory. The first is that an older family member murdered all three children. The second is that the older family member killed the first two children, and then Amarjeet copied the murder by killing Khushboo, hence how he knew what to do and how to conceal a body at such a young age. In both scenarios, Amarjeet was coerced into confessing.

This theory is based on the idea that Indian culture can value girls less than boys, with female infanticide an issue in the country. Girls are seen as a financial burden. They are a gift that is eventually given away to a husband, but the parents have to pay a dowry to the husband’s family. Boys, on the other hand, can work and provide financially for the family, and look after their parents in old age. Therefore, the speculation was that a member of the family possibly killed the girls because the Sada family was struggling financially.

One issue with this theory is that sources vary regarding the gender of Amarjeet’s cousin. If the baby was female, the speculation could be valid because there would have been three girls murdered. But it still remains pure speculation, and unless Amarjeet murdered Khushboo, someone in the Sada family murdering outside the family makes very little sense.

Plus, making the murders look like an accident would surely have been a lot easier than getting the 8-year-old Amarjeet involved. Had Amarjeet been coerced into confessing, not only is it unlikely that Amarjeet would have been able to provide such in-depth information to the police regarding the murders, but also that he likely would have slipped up somewhere during the police interrogations or the many psychiatric visits.

Conclusion

Ultimately, one of the reasons why people look elsewhere for answers is because it is difficult for people to believe that an 8-year-old could be capable of premeditated murder and also have the forethought to conceal the body. Therefore, shifting the blame from the child to an adult helps people rationalise the incomprehensible reality that a child could be responsible for the brutal murders of three children. But as much as society struggles to believe that children are capable of murder, history has shown us they absolutely are.

There is one thing about this case though that is absolutely certain. The Sada family covered up their son’s first murders, and it was their silence that led to not just Khushboo’s death, but also Amarjeet’s sister’s. The family is responsible for enabling their son. Two innocent girls lost their lives, making the family members who covered up Amarjeet’s crimes just as guilty as the boy they were so desperate to protect.

Note on the Sources

The information for this text has been compiled from various online sources, and my goal is to present the details as accurately as possible. However, this case was particularly difficult to research, as cases involving children often have a degree of protection, leading to gaps where the exact circumstances are unknown. Additionally, since this case is based in India, some information may have been lost in translation, or missing or inaccurate information has become mainstream over time.

As a result, certain details vary across sources. For example, Amarjeet is referred to as Amardeep or Amar in some instances, while the gender and ages of two of the victims also differ. Amarjeet’s sister is described as 6 years old in some accounts instead of 6 months old, and Amarjeet’s cousin is referred to as either male or female.

Given these challenges, I’ve done my best to present the information as accurately as possible based on the sources available. However, in a few instances, I’ve had to make judgment calls on what seems most plausible or common, meaning that a little more ‘artistic license’ has been used than I would usually like.