Mahoba: Ganj could be called one of UP's last villages. Some distance away, along a scraggy landscape, is Madhya Pradesh. It is certainly one of the remotest -- 74 km from the district headquarters of Mahoba Sunil Basura, the 20-year-old now alleged to be a serial rapist and murderer, grew up here.Along the Dhasana river, there are a few rows of houses near the one that Sunil lived in before he migrated to Gurgaon in search of a job. When TOIspoke to the occupants there on Wednesday, almost all of them expressed shock that "an introvert who spoke to no one except his family" was capable of such cruelty.“Since childhood he was an extremely quiet kid," said Rajesh Verma, a neighbour. "I don't remember him once interacting with other children or people in the locality. In fact, the entire family was like that, detached and aloof. Sunil roamed around the village alone. We don't know of any woman or girl who had a complaint against him. But I’m speechless now at the Gurgaon police's revelation that he is a paedophile who has killed people."Residents of Ganj said Sunil, one among six siblings in a family with meagre means, wasn't known to have a bad habit either. Bhag Raj, 29, said, “That boy never went to school, but neither was he ever seen keeping bad company. His elder brother was a drug addict, but not Sunil. A decade ago, his father was found dead in a well. He was a drummer in a wedding band. The family has no land, so there was nothing for Sunil here. He went to Gurgaon early on to get any job that he could, mostly as a labourer on daily wage."Raj added that Sunil made it a point to visit the village to be with his family every year for brief periods. There is no one at what used to be his home, a small concrete structure that has no door. It's empty inside. While there is no trace of his brother, two of his sisters live with their mother in Gurgaon. Police also don't know the whereabouts of two of Sunil's other sisters.Jagpal, a village elder and husband of the gram pradhan, said that Ganj has a mixed population of about 1700 residents. "But a decade has passed without a a single case of sexual or child abuse being reported from here. We really don't know how our village could produce someone like him. If he is guilty, then he has brought shame to the village and should be given exemplary punishment."Gurgaon police on Tuesday had said that Sunil is the alleged rapist and murderer of at least nine girls, all pre-adolescents, in Delhi, Gurgaon, Gwalior and Jhansi. The first of his known victims was a four-year-old girl who he kidnapped in Gurgaon in 2016. Her battered body was found in the bushes on November 28 that year. He struck again in Gurgaon two months later, in January 2017. This time he attacked a five-year-old.There were manhunts for Sunil, but they mostly came to naught as he lived the life of a vagabond, without an address or phone, eating at free food stalls and sleeping wherever he found a place. He has now allegedly confessed in police custody to raping and killing four other girls in Delhi, one in Gwalior and another in Jhansi.But in Mahoba there isn't anything against him in police records. Station house officer at Ajner, Mahendra Singh Bhadouria, said, "In 2002, a sexual assault case was lodged in the village, but there was no criminal case against Sunil or any of his family members.”Interestingly, though Gurgaon police claimed that Sunil was arrested from Magarpur under Sakrar police's jurisdiction in Jhansi district, cops in Jhansi denied any knowledge of the arrest. SP Vinod Kumar Singh told TOI, “Sunil has no criminal record here, and the Gurgaon police didn't inform us about his arrest.”

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