In the Nirbhaya like incident, two unrepentant criminals met their end 38 years ago, in 1982 by being hanged inside Tihar Jail.
This brand of reasoning is used even today when people except Ranga and Billa are referred to in order to make a distinction decades after their execution.
Ranga and Billa in 1978 two siblings had kidnapped them while they had been given a lift in the middle of Delhi for ransom.
But when the criminals learnt that the brother and sister Geeta and Sanjay Chopra were the children of a naval officer they got tense and after subjecting them to terrible torture, they killed them. Its reported that Geeta went through rape before being killed.
Appeal Kuljeet Singh alias Ranga Khus and Jasbir Singh alias Billa were given death sentences and after four years, they were executed.
The counsel representing the Congress leader P Chidambaram revealed the names of the criminals in November last year when he was seeking his client’s bail in the top court in the INX Media money-laundering case.
The counsel and senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal, moved an impassioned appeal to have Chidambaram released on bail stating this was because the Delhi High Court has said if the leader is to be granted bail then a wrong message would go round the nation because Chidambaram has been in jail since August 21, 2019.
Chidambaram’s lawyer Sibal had harshly said, “It has been said (in the HC verdict) that a wrong message would go to country if I (Chidambaram) am released on bail as if I am some kind of criminal like ‘Ranga’ and ‘Billa’, My Lord,”
The district and sessions judge M. L. Treon handed down death penalty to Ranga and Billa; to conduct the hanging, Tihar hangmen Fakira and Kalu called from Faridkot and Meerut Jails said the ‘Black Warrant’ book by Sunil Gupta, main Tihar Jail law officer & Sunetra Choudhury the Journalist.
Before hanging they were given tea and it was asked of them if they wanted to write a will but they refused.
As outlined in the book, on the 31 of January in the year 1982 their faces were covered and a rope was placed around their necks.
The book says while Ranga went up shouting ‘Jo Bole So Nihaal Sat Sri Akal!’ Billa cried.
The eight men fell on the well and hanged there up to the time that the doctor who examined their bodies claimed that Ranga had a pulse, nearly two hours after the lever was pulled by the hangmen , as indicated in the book.
And so, a guard was made to jump into the well beneath Ranga’s body and pull his legs, writes Gupta in the book.
BACKGROUND OF THE CASE IN TIHAR
Geeta and Sanjay were the children of Captain MM Chopra, the man serving in the naval headquarters of Delhi; on August 1978, unsusingly, the two kids got into a stolen car along with the two killers – Billa and Ranga. Instead of reaching the All India Radio where Geeta had a meeting requested, the teenagers were abducted.
Sanjay, 15, who tackled the criminals, was stabbed dead. Their bodies were retrieved after three days on August 29. Police also urged members of the public to volunteer information that would lead to the arrest of the killers. Some army jawans caught them boarding at Agra, the military compartment of Delhi Howrah – Kalka Mail train.
Sanjay and Geeta grew up as the only kids in the family of their parents. Their murders, the reasons behind which still remain unclear up to date, were shocking the conscience of the nation, and put a darkness over the Capital.
As charged, Billa was put to having made a statement that they had kidnapped the children for ransom and for this.reason he was credited to have made.
On November 16, 1979 justices VD Misra and FS Gill of Delhi high court in 128-page order dismissed Ranga’s and Billa’s appeal against death penalty awarded by the sessions court for murder of Chopra children in August 1978.
The two judges said that with the removal of the two convicts, the society would be far much better and safe.
”In fact, in any other sentence apart from a death penalty, will be meaning a total failure of justice,” the court said.
RK Garg, appeared for Billa and said as the Supreme Court that one could not dispute the heinousness of the offence but the court as a cold chamber should look into the question whether there was a frame up by the police because the crime precipitated a political storm.
The recovery of the car in which the two children were enticed on the promise of giving them a lift, makes a lot of sense. But also the fingerprints in the car in which the two children had struggled in their attempt to release themselves were also evident.
Garg also questioned where the police remained waited for the arrest of the accused before the fingerprint report was forwarded and why did they not verify the fingerprints right from Bombay where they were easily accessible.
Without the fingerprint report the police leaked to the newspapers that Billa and Ranga had committed the crime,’ said Garg. They provided the press with information about rape of a young and helpless girl, while the police surgeon’s report denied the rape, Garg said.
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