A 46-year-old serial killer, who used to murder and dump the bodies near Tihar jail after beheading and chopping off other body parts of the victims, was today awarded life imprisonment till his death by a Delhi court.

Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau termed it a "rare" case and refused to show mercy to Chandrakant Jha, a native of Madhepura in Bihar, saying his intention was to cause "public outrage" by killing people in such a brutal manner and to some extend, he had succeed in doing so.

"The offence has been committed in exceptional depravity and extreme brutality. The postmortem report confirms that the death in this case was a result of decapitation (not a case where decapitation followed death). How much pain the victim must have suffered at the time of his death?," the court said.

It also imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on Jha, who was dressed in white kurta-pyjama and brown cap.

Jha was today sentenced to life term in one of the three cases of murder in which he has been convicted. The quantum of sentence in the other two murder cases will be pronounced on February 5 and 6.

Public Prosecutor P K Verma had told the court that in today's case, Jha had committed the murder of a person whom he used to call as Dalip days before May 18, 2007 by beheading his body and after wrapping the decapitated body in a bag, he had thrown it outside Gate no.1 of the Central Jail, Tihar.

In order to conceal the identity of the deceased and to destroy the evidence, he had thrown head and other body parts of the victim at various places here, the police had said.

The court had also convicted Jha for killing two others, Amit and Upender, and dumping their headless bodies near Tihar in 2006 and 2007 respectively.

After committing the murders, Jha had even threatened and challenged the police by writing several letters to them to nab him and that he would send "similar gifts" (such bodies) to it after every 15 days. 

The police had said Jha had invited his victims to stay with him and took good care of them. After some time, he would get annoyed with them easily and took offence to their activities, it had said.

It had said that Jha used to tie the hands and feet of the victims before strangulating them.

Later on, the other parts of the victims were recovered by the police from several places in Delhi.

Jha was caught by the police on May 20, 2007 near Mianwali Nagar here and during interrogation, he had disclosed of killing several people by beheading their bodies and also of throwing their other body parts in various places here, the court noted in its order.

It also noted that Jha, himself had informed the police about the bodies lying in front of Tihar jail.

Amicus Curiae Deepak Sharma, appearing for Jha, had sought a lenient view in sentencing on the ground that he has a family comprising his wife and five daughters and any stern view would cause mental, financial and social trauma to them.

However, the court said Jha does not deserve leniency as he had betrayed the trust and confidence which the victims, who were known to him, had reposed in him.

"He used to chose his victims carefully who were young men from poor families whose confidence he could easily win," the court said, adding that the serial killings were "senseless" and were committed in a "pre-planned" manner.

"The convict is mission oriented and task oriented serial killer whose only motive/mission is to expose, mock and challenge the police.

"This he was doing because, according to him, the police had implicated him falsely in many criminal cases and he wanted to get at the system," the court said.