HT Archives: Ranga, Billa’s death penalty upheld for gruesome murders

The Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of Billa and Ranga for the 1978 abduction and murder of siblings Geeta and Sanjay Chopra in Delhi.

A Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India YV Chandrachud, and including justices Chinnappa Reddy and Bahrul Islam, on December 8, 1980, dismissed an appeal by Jasbir Singh alias Billa (25), and Kuljit Singh alias Ranga (23), against their death sentence and conviction for the abduction and murder of the teenaged Chopra children.

On November 16, 1979, the Delhi high court confirmed the death sentences by the sessions court to Ranga and Billa for the murder of the Chopra children in August 1978. (HT Archive)

It was in August 1978 that Geeta and Sanjay, the children of Captain MM Chopra, who was serving at the naval headquarters in Delhi, hitched a ride with the killers, Billa and Ranga, near Dhaula Kuan in a car stolen earlier by the criminal duo. Instead of being dropped at the All India Radio, where Geeta had an appointment, the teenagers were kidnapped.

Sanjay, 15, who grappled with the criminals, was knifed to death. Geeta, 17, was criminally assaulted before Ranga and Billa stabbed her too in a bush near the usually deserted Buddha Jayanti Park straddling the Delhi Ridge. Their bodies were recovered three days later on August 29. A nationwide manhunt was launched for the killers. They were caught by some army jawans while boarding at Agra, the military compartment of the Delhi-bound Howrah-Kalka Mail.

Sanjay and Geeta were the only children of their parents. Their murders, for which the motives were never fully established, shook the conscience of the nation, casting a pall of gloom over the Capital. According to the charges against them, Billa was credited with having made a statement that they had kidnapped the children for ransom.

On November 16, 1979, justices VD Misra and FS Gill of the Delhi high court in a 128-page order confirmed the death sentences by the sessions court to Ranga and Billa for the murder of the Chopra children in August 1978.

The two judges stated that with the elimination of the two convicts, society would be much better off and its safety no longer in danger.

“Indeed, to award any other sentence except death will amount to complete failure of justice,” the court observed.

RK Garg, appearing for Billa, said in the Supreme Court that one could not deny the heinousness of the crime but the court with cold objectivity should see whether there had been a frame up by the police in view of the public storm that the crime raised. The recovery of the car in which the two children were enticed on the promise of giving them a lift was important. But also the fingerprints in the car in which the two children had struggled to free themselves were also important.

Garg also asked why the police waited for the arrest of the accused before the fingerprint report was submitted and why did they not immediately verify the prints from Bombay where they were readily available. Without the fingerprint report, the police gave out to the newspapers that Billa and Ranga had committed the crime, Garg said. They told the press of rape on a young and hapless girl, but the police surgeon’s report stated that no rape had taken place, Garg pointed out.

Both the trial court and the high court, he said, had ignored this medical report. Justice required and the public had a right to know how the police charged Billa and Ranga with rape when their own doctor’s report denied such a happening.

VJ Francis, appearing for Ranga, tried to show that Ranga’s sentence should be reduced to one of life imprisonment as at various points of time he had tried to persuade Billa to let the children go. He contended that the confessions made by the two convicts were illegal and could not form the basis of the conviction.

However, the CJI rejected all these arguments and declared that the high court judgment was a well-reasoned one. When Garg stated that convictions about sentencing would be on trial in this case, the Chief Justice countered that this would be really not so as professional killers were involved. There may have been no rape as the medical record shows but there could be no doubt that the girl had been treated by the two convicts very badly.

The judgment said that it been proved by the prosecution that the children were murdered around 9.30pm, on August 26, 1978 with a sword and a kirpan which were later recovered by the police at the instance of the accused.

The verdict rung down the curtain on one of the longest legal battles in a murder case starting from the trial magistrate’s court in September 1978 to the Supreme Court.