Photo for representational purposes only: Screenshot taken from app (left) and Pixabay (right)
In a series of events that are nothing short of a dramatic crime thriller, Uttar Pradesh’s notorious ‘TikTok Villain’, who murdered three people, is no more. Ashwini Kumar, 33, also known as Johny Dada, was suspected for the murder of the son of a local Bharatiya Janata (BJP) party leader, the leader’s nephew and an air hostess who had allegedly rejected his advances.However, it was his videos on TikTok, Facebook and other social media accounts, in which he threatened to hurt and kill anyone who had insulted him, that eventually led to his undoing. His Facebook wall was plastered with spiteful messages like, “I will destroy everything”, “Devil is ready now” and “See my havoc”. Even though he didn’t have any previous criminal record, his actions put him on the ‘Most Wanted List’ in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district. There was even a bounty of Rs 1 lakh put out for his capture.The local police had been after him for more than a week, and around 15 teams were deployed to chase him. Some tried tracing his digital footprint, while others combed through the nearby Daulatabad forest and investigated all town borders. It was during one of these border checking, on October 5, that a team intercepted a bus on the Badlapur highway and noticed someone suspicious sitting next to the driver.Senior police official Vishwajeet Srivastava told IANS, "He was trying to flee and had boarded a roadways bus to Delhi. A local police team stopped the bus around 1.15 a.m. on Saturday."Bijnor’s superintendent of police (SP), Sanjiv Tyagi confirmed that the person was indeed Johny Dada, who died by suicide after shooting himself with a revolver while trying to avoid being arrested by the Bijnor police. The police also recovered a 14-page confession on the brutal murders carried out by him.
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Perhaps the most unsettling part of the story is that Kumar, who was working at a private firm in Delhi and was an active TikTok user, seemed like any other guy. Towards the end, though, his family confirmed that he abruptly gave up his job and had apparently become a heavy drug user. All of this could have driven him over the edge, before culminating to what transpired last weekend.Follow Shamani Joshi on Instagram.