The cover of Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer, by Sunetra Choudhury and Sunil Gupta (Roli Books, 2019)
“It was only when Billa saw Geeta, Ranga claims, that he was overpowered by his attraction towards her and turned a simple kidnap and robbery into the most gruesome rape and murder case that Delhi had heard of at that time,” says Gupta.
The Delhi High Court’s death penalty was upheld by the Supreme Court. Morarji Desai, who was the Prime Minister of India in 1978, took special interest in the case. His government was torn apart for its handling of the Chopra slayings.
The Janata Party alliance government, which was voted into power after the Emergency, lost the subsequent elections. The sorry state of the law and order of Delhi had a significant role to play in the Janata Party’s defeat.
The September 30, 1978, issue of the India Today Magazine reported, “The capital’s steadily deteriorating law and order situation had already reached rock bottom, and the Chopra slayings were the spark that lit the conflagration. Captain Chopra, the father of the slain children, was echoing the sentiments of a majority of Delhi’s citizens when he said bitterly: ‘These days no mother and father feels secure about their children. It is not the question of my children—it is my children today; tomorrow it can be others.'”
The Black Warrant
(Why Black Warrant: A ‘Black Warrant’ is called so because of the black lines that frame a death warrant.)
As soon as Ranga and Billa’s death warrant was signed, Tihar’s hangmen received the summons. Fakira from Faridkot in Punjab and Kalu from Meerut Jail made their way to Tihar to see through the hanging of Delhi’s notorious rapist-killer duo.
The hanging was set for January 31, 1982, four years after the rape and murder of Geeta and Sanjay Chopra.
A week before January 31, Ranga and Billa were moved to the phansi kothi, now located in Jail Number 3. This section of Tihar has 16 ‘death cells’; earmarked for death-row inmates in their final week. The hanging area is housed within this building. It is shielded from the rest of the jail and far from the eyes of the public.
No one from outside the phansi kothi would have any idea of the preparations that went underway when a death-row inmate was prepped for hanging.
The best of prison services are made available for the death-row inmates when in phansi kothi. Prisoners are asked if they want a final meeting with their family, or a magistrate to note their will. Ten minutes before the time of hanging, they are handcuffed and taken to the hanging platform.
The night before the hanging, as Billa sobbed, Ranga had also mocked him: “Dekho, mard hoke ro raha hai (Look at this pathetic crying man)!”
In Delhi back then, only jail officials were allowed to be present when a hanging is underway. So, when Ranga and Billa were taken to the hanging platform on January 31, 1982, there was no-one except for the jail men. Jail Road was shut down and the media had no inkling of how the hanging was panning out inside Tihar.
Billa was sobbing, recalls Sunil Gupta, as the noose went around his neck. Ranga, on the other hand, true to his name “Ranga Khush“, shouted, “Jo Bole So Nihaal, Sat Sri Akal!“
The Final Minutes
When the hangmen pulled the lever that parted the hanging platform, plunging Ranga and Billa into the 15-foot well below, death was supposed to be instantaneous. Billa’s was. Ranga, two hours after the hanging, still had a pulse.
The slim and tall Ranga had held his breath while the hangmen pulled the lever, and thus survived the hanging. One jail staff had to enter the well and physically pull Ranga’s legs till he was dead. That’s how Ranga’s last breath was pulled out of him, quite literally.
Ranga and Billa’s families did not come to claim their bodies. The jail staff cremated them.
The Death-Row Interviews
On January 30, a day before the hanging of Ranga and Billa, five reporters from Delhi walked the corridors of Tihar Jail’s death row to interview Billa.
Prakash Patra, then with The National Herald, recalled for The Telegraph later, “The reporters stood in front of a cell, separated by an iron grille, to interview Jasbir Singh alias Billa, hours before he was to hang with his accomplice Kuljeet Singh, alias Ranga, for the brutal murders of siblings Sanjay and Geeta Chopra in 1978.”
Only Billa had agreed to the interview. Ranga did not want to meet anyone.
“When we met him, Jasbir Singh stood about a foot from the grille. What I remember most from that 15-20-minute encounter are two things: how the man trembled and how his voice was high-pitched and clear,” writes Patra, “He repeatedly proclaimed his innocence and kept saying that ‘Rab‘ (God) knew that he had not committed the murders for which he was to hang. I don’t think any of us present that day believed him for a second.”
The next day, Delhi read Billa’s interview splashed across newspapers. The rapist-killer of Delhi teens Geeta and Sanjay Chopra, along with his accomplice Ranga, had already been sent to the gallows by then.
