New Delhi:
It was 6.15 in the evening when naval children Geeta and Sanjay Chopra left their house in Dhaula Kuan Officers Enclave. It was the evening of the last days of August in 1978. The threat of large-scale floods was looming in North India. Both of them were going to the All India Radio (AIR) office at Sansad Marg for a special program amidst drizzle. Geeta, a second year student of Jesus and Mary College, was to come to Yuva Vani with brother Sanjay at 8 pm that day.
Since the Chopra siblings could not walk to Sansad Marg due to rain, they traveled with Dr. MS Nanda, who dropped them near Gole Dak Khana, a kilometer before the AIR office. His father was to pick him up from Akashvani office at 9 pm. This was August 26, 1978.
The bodies of Sanjay and Geeta were found on 28 August 1978.
However, Sanjay and Geeta, son and daughter of Indian Navy Captain MM Chopra and Roma Chopra, could not reach the All India Radio office. His parents never heard his voice again. Three days later, a shepherd found the decomposing bodies of two children in the dense forest of the ridge, it was 6 pm on 28 August 1978.
After Dr. MS Nanda dropped Sanjay and Geeta near Gole Dak Khana, some people had seen a lemon colored Fiat around the area, there was something wrong with the car.
Bhagwan Das, owner of an electrical goods shop, saw the Fiat passing by him at Gole Market intersection. She called the police at 6.45 pm to report the alleged kidnapping. There were two teenagers in the back seat of the car and the girl among them was screaming for help. ‘MRK 930’ was written on the number plate of the car.
The control room sent a wireless alert to the vehicles patrolling the area. Soon after the alert was issued, another similar report was lodged at Rajinder Nagar police station.
Junior engineer Inderjit Singh Noato, 23, informed duty officer Harbhajan Singh that he saw a Fiat speeding past his scooter near Lohia Hospital. He had heard the muffled screams of a girl from the car.
People saw children in the car asking for help
As soon as he stopped his scooter near the Fiat at the intersection, he saw two people in the front seat of the car, and a boy and a girl in the back seat. The girl was pulling the driver’s hair. When the boy saw Singh approaching the window, he pointed towards his blood-stained T-shirt. The car broke the signal and sped away.
Even after this, the police could not take timely action and public anger burst out on the streets. Three days after Geeta and Sanjay went missing, the police learned that they had been murdered. Geeta has also been raped.
Delhi did not become the ‘rape capital’ until the 1970s. The rape-murder of Geeta and Sanjay Chopra was perhaps the first heinous crime of Delhi. Delhi High Court awarded death sentence to killers Kuljeet alias Ranga Khush and Jasbir Singh alias Bengali alias Billa.
While awarding death penalty to the convicts for the rape and brutal murder of two innocent teenagers, the Delhi High Court said that Billa and Ranga enjoyed committing the crime and inflicting terrible pain on others and hence no other punishment than death penalty was deserved. To punish would be a complete failure of justice.
Ranga and Billa were arrested two weeks after the incident.
Two weeks after the murder of Geeta and Sanjay, runaway Ranga and Billa board the Kalka Mail to Delhi. When the train slowed down near Agra station, he boarded it. But the bogie in which he boarded was an army coach, this is where he made a mistake and ultimately he was arrested.
When Lance Naik Gurtej Singh and AV Shetty in the bogie asked for their ID, one of them said to the other, “Show them the identity card.” Lance Naik Gurtej Singh became suspicious of him. He also had a copy of the Hindi newspaper Navyug, which had a photograph of Billa – “India’s Most Wanted” in 1978.
Subsequently, at 3.30 am, when the train reached Delhi station, Ranga and Billa were handed over to the police along with their belongings, a kirpan, a live .32 bore cartridge and their blood-stained clothes. Thus, in 1978, Ranga and Billa reached the ‘hanging cell’ of Tihar Jail, where jailer Sunil Gupta was in charge of the operations. Ranga-Billa’s hanging was Gupta’s first hanging in Tihar.
A Netflix series on the life of Sunil Gupta, based on Sunetra Chaudhary’s book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer (Roli Books, 2019), is scheduled to release on January 10.
Tihar’s ‘hanging chamber’
In the book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer, Sunil Gupta explains, “Decades after first meeting Billa and Ranga, I can still distinguish them by their distinct personalities. Ranga’s name in Tihar is ‘Ranga Khush He was 24 years old and seemed quite happy in jail. In a happy place and not waiting for death, I am not sure whether he was actually happy or was trying to appear so.
According to Sunil Gupta, Billa, on the other hand, was completely opposite.
Jailer Gupta said in his book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar, “In contrast, 22-year-old Billa, who was much smaller, only 5.5 feet tall, used to roam around the jail. Ranga participated in the daily life of the jail community. But Billa did not talk to anyone and he repeatedly told us that he was framed and falsely accused, ‘Give me a lawyer. Get it.’ All the courts confirmed his death sentence, but Billa refused to accept it till the end.”
Gupta says, Ranga kept saying till the end that he and Billa had planned the kidnapping for ransom and that Geeta and Sanjay were never going to be raped or murdered.
Cover of Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer, by Sunetra Chaudhary and Sunil Gupta (Roli Books, 2019)
Gupta says, “Ranga claimed that it was only when Billa saw Geeta that his intentions turned evil and turned a simple kidnapping and robbery case into the most gruesome rape and murder case that Delhi had seen at that time.” .”
The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Delhi High Court. Morarji Desai, who was the Prime Minister of India in 1978, took special interest in this matter. Because his government was criticized for the way it handled the Chopra murder case.
The Janata Party coalition government, which came to power after the Emergency, lost the subsequent elections. The poor condition of law and order in Delhi played an important role in the defeat of the Janata Party.
The September 30, 1978 issue of India Today magazine reported, “The steadily deteriorating law and order situation in the capital had already reached its lowest ebb, and the Chopra assassination was the spark that ignited the fire. Captain Chopra, killed was the father of the children, giving voice to the sentiments of most of the citizens of Delhi, when he said: ‘Nowadays no mother and father feel safe about their children, today it is my As for the children, tomorrow it could be someone else.”
black warrant
,Why black warrant: It is called ‘Black Warrant’ because of the black lines that frame the death warrant.)
As soon as the death warrant of Ranga and Billa was signed, the executioners of Tihar received summons. Fakira from Faridkot, Punjab and Kalu from Meerut jail reached Tihar to witness the hanging of Delhi’s notorious rapist-murderer duo.
The date of hanging was fixed for January 31, 1982, four years after the rape and murder of Geeta and Sanjay Chopra.
A week before 31 January, Ranga and Billa were taken to the hanging chamber, now located in Jail No. 3. There are 16 ‘death cells’ in this section of Tihar; For death row prisoners, their last week has been scheduled. The hanging area is located inside this building. It has been kept away from the rest of the jail and from the public eye.
No one from outside the hanging room has any idea of ​​what preparations are going on there when a death row prisoner is being prepared for hanging.
The hanging chamber provides the best prison services to death row prisoners. Prisoners are asked whether they wish to have a final meeting with their family, or for a magistrate to note their will. Ten minutes before the time of hanging, he is handcuffed and taken to the hanging platform.
The night before the hanging, when Billa was crying, Ranga also made fun of him: “Look, mard hoke ro raha hai (look at this crying man)!”
At that time only jail officials were allowed to be present at the time of hanging in Delhi. Therefore, when Ranga and Billa were taken to the gallows on January 31, 1982, there was no one there except the jail staff. The jail road was closed and the media had no idea how the hanging was going on inside Tihar.
Sunil Gupta recalls that Billa was struggling because the noose had gone around his neck. Ranga, on the other hand, true to his name “Ranga Khush”, shouted, “Jo bole so nihaal, sat shri akaal!”
When the executioner pulled the lever, due to which the hanging platform was divided into two parts, Ranga and Billa fell 15 feet down into the well. It was believed that death would happen instantly, but even after two hours of hanging, Ranga’s pulse was still working. Was.
When the executioner pulled the lever, the thin and tall Ranga held his breath and due to this the process of hanging did not go smoothly. After this, a jail employee had to go down into the well and pull Ranga’s legs until he died. In this way Ranga’s last breaths were literally taken away from him.
The families of Ranga and Billa did not come to claim their bodies. The jail staff performed his last rites.
On January 30, a day before Ranga and Billa’s execution, five journalists from Delhi walked into the corridor of Tihar Jail to interview Billa.
Prakash Patra, then working at The National Herald, later recalled for The Telegraph, “Jasbir Singh alias Billa was hanged along with his associate Kuljeet Singh for the brutal murder of brother-sister Sanjay and Geeta Chopra in 1978. But a few hours before he was to be hanged, journalists were standing in front of a cell separated by an iron grill to interview him.”
Only Billa agreed to the interview. Ranga did not want to meet anyone.
Patra writes, “When we met him, Jasbir Singh was standing about a foot away from the grill. What I remember most about that 15-20 minutes are two things: How the man was trembling; And his voice was so loud and clear that he kept saying that ‘Rab’ (God) knew that he had not committed the murders for which he was to be hanged. think that None of us present that day would have believed him even for a moment.”
The next day, Billa’s interview was published in Delhi newspapers. The rapist-murderer of Delhi teenagers Geeta and Sanjay Chopra had by then been hanged along with his accomplice Ranga.
