A 24-year-old man strangled his girlfriend, stuffed her body inside a refrigerator of his dhaba (eatery) in southwest Delhi, and went off to marry another woman the same day. The incident rings bells of the Shraddha Walkar murder case, wherein the victim’s live-in partner murdered her, cut up her body into multiple parts to store them in a fridge for months. READ MORE
Such cases incite a thought into how people could commit such cold-blooded deeds, with no apparent remorse. Such accused are often psychologically characterised as psychopaths. But what is psychopathy? News18 explains:
What is Psychopathy?
According to a report by Psychology Today, Psychopathy is characterised by a lack of empathy and a blunting of other ‘affective states’. Psychopaths are very manipulative due to callousness, detachment, and a lack of empathy. Nonetheless, psychopathy is one of the most difficult illnesses to identify, the report says.
Psychopaths can pass for normal people, even charming ones. They are devoid of any pretence of conscience. Their antagonistic disposition predisposes them to criminality frequently (but not always).
Psychopaths arouse public interest as well as clinical anguish: Adult psychopathy is generally resistant to therapy, while programmes exist to treat callous, unemotional kids in the hopes of preventing them from becoming into psychopaths.
What Causes Psychopathy?
The development of psychopathic tendencies may be influenced by brain structure, genetics, and a person’s environment.
As per a report by Royal Society, when people with psychopathic characteristics see other people in distress or try to learn the consequences of their actions, the areas of the brain involved in emotion processing, empathy, and decision making, such as the amygdala, insula, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, show reduced activity.
Individuals with psychopathy have reduced ability to create links between stimuli and outcomes, such as injuring other people and the fear and suffering others express as a result, or making a poor choice and receiving a punishment.
Overall, decreased activity in these parts of the brain hampers emotional responses and decision making. The fundamental question is whether these variations in the brain cause someone to become a psychopath or whether their behaviour changes the brain.
Children that exhibit callous-unemotional qualities, such as a lack of empathy, a lack of guilt, and shallow emotions, are more likely to develop psychopathy as adults. These kids are more likely to engage in anti-social behaviours like bullying and hostility. They are less likely to respond to socially rewarding stimuli such as pleasant faces and to recognise a frightening look. Adolescents with callous-unemotional tendencies may want to be cruel rather than kind. They are also less likely to build long-term friendships because they may not appreciate these relationships, the report says.
How to Spot a Psychopath
Psychopathy is a spectrum disorder that can be diagnosed using the 20-item Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which includes traits like lack of empathy, pathological lying, and impulsivity, the report by Psychology Today says. Each item is scored on a three-point scale based on whether it does not apply to the individual (0), applies to a certain extent (1), or fully applies (2). A clinical psychopathy score of 30 or higher is required; serial killer Ted Bundy received a score of 39.
Robert Hare, a Canadian scholar, created the checklist in the 1970s. A true evaluation should be performed by a mental health expert.
The following features have been added to the revised checklist:
- Glibness/superficial appeal
- inflated feeling of self-worth
- Boredom/the desire for stimulation
- Pathological deception
- Conning/manipulative
- Absence of remorse or guilt
- shallow impact (i.e., reduced emotional responses)
- Lack of empathy/callousness
- parasitic way of life
- Ineffective behavioural controls
- Sexually immoral behaviour
- Early behavioural issues
- a lack of long-term, realistic aims
- Impulsivity
- Irresponsibility
- Failure to accept personal responsibility for one’s conduct
- There are numerous short-term marital unions.
- Adolescent delinquency
- Conditional release revocation (from prison)
- Criminal adaptability (i.e., commits diverse types of crimes)
What Happened in the Current Case?
Five men arrested in connection with the killing of 23-year-old Nikki Yadav had planned to get rid of her so that Sahil Gehlot could marry a second time to a woman of the family’s choosing, police said on Saturday.
During interrogation, it was revealed that Gehlot’s family was very much aware of his marriage to Yadav but they were against it, the police said.
Police arrested five people — Gehlot’s father, his two cousins and two friends — late Friday night in connection with the killing. One of the cousins is a Delhi Police constable. Gehlot was arrested earlier.
“Gehlot had married Yadav at an Arya Samaj temple in 2020. The couple had not informed their respective families about their marriage. However, when Gehlot’s parents started looking for a girl for his marriage and started pressuring him to take interest in marriage…, he finally revealed to his family that he was already married,” a police officer privy to the probe told PTI.
However, when Gehlot’s family got to know about his marriage to Yadav, they expressed their displeasure over him marrying a girl of his choice without informing them.
“On multiple occasions, the accused persons persuaded him to leave Nikki Yadav and get her out of the way. They kept putting pressure on him and he also failed to convince his family members,” the officer said.
After his second marriage date was fixed, the accused persons kept persuading Gehlot to get rid of Yadav so that he can marry the girl his family chose, police said.
“…the accused persons started discussing about ways to get rid of Nikki Yadav and the entire plan to take her on a trip was just a ploy. They somehow wanted to get rid of Nikki before the D-day. Gehlot also thought that he will somehow convince Nikki to go for a trip with him outstation and whenever, he gets an opportunity on the way, he would kill her during their trip,” the officer added.
“The plan was to murder her before his wedding which Gehlot executed. After killing her, he informed the other accused persons including his father who helped him in planning and conspiring the murder. They stuffed the body inside the fridge thinking that it will stay fresh and there would not be any foul smell. No one would be able to suspect or detect anything unusual since everyone would be busy in wedding for at least three days and later they would dispose off her body leisurely,” he said.
Nikki Yadav’s parents, however, told police that they were not aware of her relationship or her wedding with Gehlot. The deceased’s sister told police that she only knew that both Nikki Yadav and Gehlot were very close friends and nothing more, according to the police.
They would also be questioning the witnesses who were part of the secret wedding between Yadav and Gehlot and are also checking phone locations of the accused persons as part of collecting evidence.
“We are collecting corroborative evidence as of now which includes technical and scientific evidence to make the case stronger,” the police officer said.
“All five co-accused including the father Virender Singh, two cousins Ashish and Naveen and two friends Amar and Lokesh of Sahil Gehlot were thoroughly interrogated and arrested after verifying and ascertaining their role in connection with the killing,” Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said.
Naveen, a constable in Delhi Police, is a relative of prime accused Sahil Gehlot, he said.
Gehlot, already under police custody, has been interrogated at length. Since his arrest, he has confessed to murdering his girlfriend, Nikki Yadav, because she had been pressuring him to marry her.
The two, according to police, had already solemnised their marriage in 2020. She was actually his wife and not a live-in partner, the special commissioner of police said. Therefore, she was pleading with him not to go ahead with the marriage fixed by his family with another woman on February 10, he added.
When Gehlot could not convince Nikki Yadav to make way for his marriage to the woman, he hatched a plan to kill her and roped in others.
“Accordingly, Sahil Gehlot executed the plan and murdered her and informed the other co-accused persons about it on the same day ie February 10 and then all of them went ahead with the marriage ceremony,” the officer said. Several other charges including those of criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence, and harbouring a criminal have been added to the FIR, police said.
The incident had come to light on February 14, Valentine’s Day, four days after the crime.
Gehlot under police custody confessed to the crime and led police to the fridge in his eatery where he had hidden the body.
With inputs from PTI
This report was originally published on February 15, 2023.
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