Self-named ‘Psycho’ shot Anuj Bidve for having ‘the biggest head’

A KILLER who called himself ‘Psycho’ has been found guilty of murdering an Indian student at random.

Kiaran Stapleton walked up to stranger Anuj Bidve, 23, in the street in Salford, Greater Manchester, and shot him in the head at point-blank range.

Stapleton, 21, had admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but a jury at Manchester Crown Court convicted him of murder. Sentencing will take place today.

Before the verdict was announced, Stapleton, wearing a grey Adidas tracksuit, jogged up the steps to the dock from the cells. He looked around the courtroom and grinned before the jury foreman stood up. He stared straight ahead as the verdict was announced.

Mr Bidve had arrived in the UK last September to embark on postgraduate studies in micro-electronics.

His parents, Subhash and Yogini, flew from their home in Pune, India, to attend the trial.

As the verdict was delivered, Mrs Bidve cried and Mr Bidve bowed in his seat and later held his hands to his face. Stapleton’s parents, Tony and Billie-Jean, stayed away, but four of his eight siblings attended.

Mr Bidve was visiting Manchester with a group of friends from Lancaster University last Christmas. They left their hotel in the early hours of Boxing Day to queue early for the sales when their paths crossed with 
Stapleton’s. He calmly walked across the road and repeatedly asked for the time.

When someone finally answered he pulled a handgun out of his pocket and fired one shot to Mr Bidve’s left temple.

He was then seen to smirk or laugh over his victim’s body before he ran off to his nearby home in Ordsall. The weapon, which fired a 9mm bullet, has not been found. Mr Bidve never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead in hospital.

Stapleton later told a psychologist in prison that he picked out his victim because “he had the biggest head”.

The defendant’s callousness was stark in the days that followed. First he booked into a hotel overlooking the crime scene in Ordsall Lane to keep pace with the investigation and revel in the chaos he had created.

Then he went to a tattoo parlour and had a teardrop design placed below his right eye – a symbol used by some gangs to mark that the wearer has killed someone.

After he was arrested and charged with murder he made his first appearance at Manchester Magistrates’ Court and gave his name as “Psycho Stapleton”.

Both the prosecution and defence agreed Stapleton had a recognised medical condition – an anti-social personality disorder.

He showed traits of callousness, impulsiveness, anger, lack of remorse and incapacity to experience guilt. The defence claimed he suffered from an abnormality of mental functioning and it probably impaired his ability to exercise self-control.

But the jury rejected that argument. Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for the North West, said Anuj Bidve’s “senseless” murder had “shocked and appalled us all”.

Following the trial Mr Bidve’s parents, Subhash and Yogini, said: “When Anuj came to the United Kingdom in 2011 he carried with him the hopes and dreams of all our family.

“He was the man who was going to fulfil our hopes and dreams. Instead, in the early hours of Boxing Day morning, Stapleton cold-bloodedly and brutally murdered our son.

“Stapleton had never met our son and did not know anything about him. Stapleton, in the blink of an eye, and the time it took a bullet to leave the gun he was holding, turned Anuj’s hopes and dreams into our living and continuous nightmare.

“We will now return to India, far sadder, and will take with us only the memories of our beloved son Anuj.”