General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Indian Predator: The Diary of a Serial Killer

Indian Predator: The Diary of a Serial Killer (Hindi title: इंडियन प्रीडेटर: एक सीरियल किलर की डायरी) is a 2022 Indian true crime documentary series that examines the case of Raja Kolander, a Uttar Pradesh man convicted of murdering a journalist and accused, though never convicted, of killing many more people and practicing cannibalism. It was released on Netflix on 7 September 2022 as the second installment of the Indian Predator franchise, following The Butcher of Delhi (July 2022).¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	7 September 2022, Netflix; all three episodes released the same day¹
Format	Three-episode Hindi-language documentary, about 41 to 42 minutes per episode³
Production	Directed by Dheeraj Jindal; produced by India Today Originals⁴
Subject	Raja Kolander (birth name Ram Niranjan) of Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, convicted of murdering journalist Dhirendra Singh⁵
Central evidence	A diary found at his piggery farm listed Singh and 14 other names, leading to the exhumation of more than a dozen sets of human remains⁶
Court outcome	Kolander and his brother-in-law Vakshraj Kol received life imprisonment after a 12-year trial; the court found cannibalism charges unproven⁷
Reception	IMDb 6.2/10 from about 2,400 ratings; Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 71% from 7 reviews⁸^•¹

Spoilers

The case the series covers

In December 2000, journalist Dhirendra Singh went missing in Allahabad (now Prayagraj), Uttar Pradesh. Police traced calls from his mobile phone and caught Kolander and Vaksharaj on 18 December 2000; Singh's body was recovered, along with 14 skulls from Kolander's house.⁹ Kolander confessed to the killing, saying he had become wary of Singh, who had learned of his involvement in criminal activities including murder and loot and had threatened to expose him.⁷

The case took its documentary shape from a diary. Per the parents' guide that Common Sense Media published, when Kolander's diary was found, it contained Singh's name along with those of 14 others, and this find prompted investigators to dig up over a dozen sets of human remains at his pig farm. Investigators also believed he consumed his victims' brains, and police alleged he had murdered at least a dozen more people and resorted to sorcery and cannibalism.⁶^•¹⁰

The courts drew a narrower conclusion. The sessions court in Uttar Pradesh found it proved beyond doubt that Kolander and his brother-in-law had murdered Dhirendra Singh, but that the prosecution had failed to establish their involvement in any other killings or the charges of cannibalism. The court therefore refused to treat the case as "rarest of rare" and sentenced both men to life imprisonment after a 12-year-long trial.⁷ Kolander has appealed his convictions, and despite the lack of evidence his reputation as a ritualistic cannibal persists.¹¹^•⁶

Episodes

All three episodes were released on 7 September 2022.³

The Murderer. The headless corpse of a vanished journalist is recognized by investigators, who follow a trail of phone calls to one suspect; after he gives a disturbing admission, it emerges that further details lie behind it.¹
The Cannibal. A chilling pattern appears to emerge from the names written in Ram Niranjan's diary; while specialists weigh what might have driven him, he offers his own account of events.¹
The King. Accounts from those who observed the convicted killer inside prison, together with a deeper examination of his past, reveal his fantasies and cravings concerning reality and power.³

Production and context

The series was the debut release of India Today Originals, the digital production vertical of the India Today Group, which used the September 2022 launch to establish itself as a producer of long-form documentary series for streaming platforms.¹² Dheeraj Jindal directed the three-part docu-series, with Sudeep Nigam as writer and Chandni Ahlawat Dabas as producer.⁴ Jindal told India Today that when the team began researching the story, only about 20 percent of it was in the public domain, which he saw as room for the show to explore further.¹⁰

The series sits within the Indian Predator franchise, which Netflix built around Indian serial-killer cases: The Butcher of Delhi (July 2022, directed by Ayesha Sood, produced by VICE India) covered Chandrakant Jha, and later installments covered other cases.²^•¹³ The Hindi-language original was made available with English subtitles and dubbed audio in languages including English, Spanish, French, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.¹⁴

The man at the center

The series devotes substantial attention to how Ram Niranjan constructed his public identity. According to the Indian Express review, a clinical psychologist theorizes in the show that the killer, aware of his lowly position in society and surrounded by the rise of the Dalit movement in politics around 2000, when both Mayawati and Phoolan Devi became household names, decided that he too should acquire power. He disowned his birth name and began calling himself Raja Kolander, "The King of the Kols", and named his children Adalat, Jamanat, and Andolan.² The series underlines that he is a member of the marginalized Kol community, though Kolander denies it and the courts found no evidence to support the claim.⁵

The trump card of the series, as the Scroll.in review puts it, is an interview with Kolander himself, in which he proclaims his innocence, promptly followed by a clinical psychologist's assertion that serial killers see themselves as victims rather than perpetrators.¹¹

Reception

Critical response was mixed. The Indian Express gave the series 3.5 out of 5, calling it a significant improvement over The Butcher of Delhi for its socio-political context and its on-camera interview with the killer, while faulting it for not questioning the systemic failures that let the crimes go undiscovered until the 14th victim, and for not examining Kolander's claim that two of the 14 people he was accused of killing turned out to be alive.² Scroll.in was more negative, describing the series as more keen on gore than insight, with lurid reconstructions, dramatic background music, and recreated news clips that make it feel like a slick update on sensation-seeking television true crime.¹¹ News9live called it an effective documentary despite an ambiguous standpoint.⁵

On aggregate measures, the series holds an IMDb rating of 6.2/10 from about 2,400 user ratings and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer of 71 percent based on 7 critics' reviews.⁸^•¹ India Today's annual report records that the series won Most Popular Web Series in Hindi Language at the Screenxx awards.¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026