Jaishankar started his criminal activities around 2008.
2009
His first crime to be reported happened on 3 July 2009, when he attempted to rape and murder 45-year-old P. Shyamala in Perandahalli.
By August 2009, he had raped and murdered 12 women, and raped another six women.
He always carried a black handbag with him.
He kept a machete in this bag, and killed whoever resisted him.
He used to kidnap sex workers near dhabas (roadside restaurants) on highways, rape them and kill them brutally.
He also targeted women in farmhouses, in rural areas.
On 23 August 2009, Jaishankar raped and murdered a 39-year-old police constable, M. Jayamani.
Originally stationed at the Kangeyam all-women police station, Jayamani was on temporary duty at Perumanallur, during the visit of deputy chief minister M. K. Stalin.
Jaishankar kidnapped her and raped her several times before killing her.
The police recovered Jayamani's body a month later, on 19 September.
Jaishankar and his partner in crime P. Mohan Selvam were charged with the murder of 50-year-old K. Thangammal Ponnaya in Namakkal on 10 September 2009.
The Tiruppur police launched a manhunt for Jaishankar and arrested him on 19 October 2009.
He was jailed at the Coimbatore Central Prison.
By this time, he had been charged with 13 separate counts of rape and murder in Tiruppur, Salem and Dharmapuri.
He revealed, while remanded in custody, that he enjoyed torturing women before he raped and killed them.
2011
In May 2011, he was reported to be a married man with three daughters.
He started his career as a truck driver.
On 17 March 2011, the police took Jaishankar to a fast-track court in Dharmapuri, for a murder case trial.
The next day, armed reserve police constables M. Chinnasamy and Rajavelu were assigned to escort him back to Coimbatore.
On the way, Jaishankar managed to escape at the Salem bus stand, around 9:30 p.m. On 19 March, Chinnasamy died by suicide after shooting himself, apparently upset at the escape.
Jaishankar escaped to Karnataka, where he raped and murdered six women in Bellary over the next month.
He also killed a man and a child in Dharmapuri.
In the last week of April 2011, the police traced his mobile phone to Delhi.
The police initially believed that he had discarded his mobile phone in Delhi.
However, in May 2011, the police traced his mobile calls to Mumbai, but he stopped using his mobile phone.
A special team, comprising two sub-inspectors and 15 other police personnel, was assigned to find and arrest him.
By May 2011, the police had put up wanted posters seeking information about Jaishankar, in public places across Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
On the night of 4 May 2011, Jaishankar reached Elagi village in Karnataka, on a stolen motorcycle.
He approached a woman, Chandrakala Hotagi, who was working alone in a field, and asked her for water and food.
He then tried to rape her, but Chandrakala raised the alarm.
Her husband, Prakash Hotagi, and a friend came to her rescue.
2014
(Later, in 2014, the two were acquitted in this case, due to insufficient evidence resulting from lapses in investigation. )
2017
He was the subject of a 2017 Kannada movie, "Psycho Shankara", focussing on his victims and their family members during his murder spree.
Jaishankar, a son of Maari Muthu, came from a Vanniyar family living in Kanniyanpatti village of Salem district, Tamil Nadu.
2018
M. Jaishankar (1977 – 27 February 2018), nicknamed Psycho Shankar, was an Indian criminal, sexual predator, and serial killer, notorious for a series of rapes and murders during 2008–2011.
It is believed that he was involved in about 30 rapes, murders, and robbery cases across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
At the time of his death, he had been accused of murdering at least 19 women.
Having been apprehended by Indian authorities, Jaishankar was imprisoned in Bangalore, where he was diagnosed as mentally ill.
He killed himself following an unsuccessful prison escape attempt in February 2018.
