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PETITIONER: KULJEET SINGH @ RANGA

       Vs.

RESPONDENT: UNION OF INDIA & ANR.

DATE OF JUDGMENT21/04/1981

BENCH: CHANDRACHUD, Y.V. ((CJ) BENCH: CHANDRACHUD, Y.V. ((CJ) SEN, A.P. (J) ISLAM, BAHARUL (J)

CITATION:  1981 AIR 1572            1981 SCR  (3) 512  1981 SCC  (3) 324        1981 SCALE  (1)676  CITATOR INFO :  R          1982 SC 774  (1)

ACT:      Constitution of India, Article 32-No material furnished for  justifying   the  reduction   of  the  death  sentence- Dismissed.

HEADNOTE:      The petitioner, alongwith another accused was convicted by the  Additional Session Judge for the murder of two young children  and  sentenced  to  death.  Their  conviction  and sentence were confirmed by the High Court. The Special Leave Petitions  filed   by  them  against  their  conviction  and sentence were dismissed by this Court. By this Writ Petition the petitioner  asked  for  re-appraisal  of  his  case  and reconsideration of the death sentence imposed upon him.      Dismissing the  Writ Petition  and upholding  the death sentence imposed upon the petitioner once again, ^      HELD: 1.  The answers given by the petitioner furnished no material  a all for justifying the reduction of the death sentence to imprisonment for life. [515 E-F]      2. The  Sessions Court and the High Court were right in coming to the conclusion that the two accused were guilty of the offence  of which they were charged. There is voluminous evidence of  unimpeachable character  which establishes  his complicity in  the murder.  The evidence regarding the theft of the  Fiat Car, the blood group of the accused, the manner of the  arrest and  the recovery of incriminating weapons at their instance  leave not  even the  slightest doubt that it was they who committed the murders. [514 D, 515 D-E]      3. It  is true  that the  murder of  the two particular children was  not pre-planned.  But  that  was  because  the accused  did  not  know  that  they  would  hit  upon  those particular children  that evening. What is important is that the accused had made all the preparations for committing the murder. The  plan was  that they  would offer a lift to some young children,  try to  extort ransom from their parents by kidnapping them and do the children to death in the event of any impediment  arising in  the execution of their plan. The impediments here  were the  uncommon courage  of  the  brave

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little children  who did  not make  an abject  surrender  to their destiny  and  the  fact  which  emerged  during  their molestation that  their father was a mere government servant whose salary  was too  small to  permit  the  payment  of  a handsome ransom. [515 G-H, 516 A-C]      4. The accused trapped the children like helpless mice. The children  got into  the car but could not get out of it. In the  boot of  the car  were kept formidable weapons which were ultimately used for committing the murder. In addition, the accused  carried sharp  weapons with them. The author of the injury  on the  boy was clearly the petitioner since his hands were more free than those of his co-accused who was at the wheel. The strategy to which they 513 adhered to  the last  without contrition  of any kink was so deep  laid.   Their  inhumanity   defies  all   belief   and description. [516E-F]      5. The case of the petitioner can not be separated from that  of  his  co-accused.  The  petitioner  was  an  active participator in  the whole  episode and  but for his willing cooperation, his  co-accused could  never have  succeeded in his design.  Many atrocities  were committed, many falsehood uttered,  many  escapades  achieved  and  many  an  evidence concealed or  destroyed by  them. The  petitioner’s part  in carrying out  the nefarious plan is no less significant than that of  his co-accused  and he  is no less guilty than him. There is  no room  for treating the one differently from the other. [517 A-C]      6. The  survival of  an  orderly  society  demands  the extinction of  persons like  the accused who are a menace to social order  and security.  They are professional murderers and deserve  no sympathy  even  in  terms  of  the  evolving standards of decency of a maturing society. [516 G-H]

JUDGMENT:      ORIGINAL JURISDICTION : Writ Petition No. 539 of 1981.       (Under Article 32 of the Constitution of India)      R.K.  Garg,   D.K.  Garg   and  R.C.  Kaushik  for  the Petitioner.      M.K. Banarjee,  Addl.. Sol. Genl. and A. Subhashini for Respondent No. 1.      N.C. Talukdar and R.N. Poddar for Respondent No. 2.      The Judgment of the Court was delivered by      CHANDRACHUD, C.  J. Kuljeet Singh alias Ranga Khus, the petitioner herein, was convicted along with one Jasbir Singh alias Billa, by the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Delhi for various  offences in  connection with  the murder of two young children, Geeta Chopra and her brother Sanjay. The two accused were  sentenced  to  death  for  the  offence  under section 302  read with  section 34  of the Penal Code and to varying terms  of imprisonment  under sections  363, 365,366 and 376  read with  section 34  of the  Code. The  order  of conviction and  sentence, including  the sentence  of death, was confirmed  by the Delhi High Court by its judgment dated November 16,  1979 where- upon the two accused filed Special Leave  Petitions  562  and  1739  of  1980  in  this  Court, challenging their  conviction and  sentence.  Those  Special Leave Petitions  were dismissed  on December  8, 1980  by  a Bench of this Court consisting of Justice O. Chinappa Reddy, Justice Baharul  Islam and  one of  us the Chief Justice. By this writ  Petition, the  petitioner virtually  asks for the re-appraisal of  his  case  and  a  reconsideration  of  the dismissal of his Special Leave Petition.

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514 The thrust  of the petition is against the sentence of death imposed on the petitioner.      By an order dated February 24, 1981 the learned Chamber Judge, Justice  A.C. Gupta,  had stayed the execution of the death sentence  pending disposal of the Writ Petition. By an order  dated  March  23,  1981  we  had  directed  that  the petitioner should  be produced  on March  30  in  the  Chief Justice’s Chamber  and  that  the  execution  of  the  death sentence  should   be  stayed   until  further  orders.  The petitioner  was   accordingly  produced  before  us  in  the presence of  his counsel,  Shri R.K.  Garg. Counsel  for the Union of  India  and  the  Delhi  Administration  were  also present. We questioned the petitioner on matters bearing, as we thought,  on the  question of  sentence. We will refer to the result of that somewhat unusual exercise a little later.      First,  regarding   the  conviction  itself.  There  is voluminous  evidence   of  unimpeachable   character   which establishes conclusively the complicity of the petitioner in the murder  of Geeta and Sanjay. Dr. M.S. Nanda (PW 56) gave a lift to Geeta and Sanjay from Dhaula Kuan to Gol DakKhana. Bhagwan Das  (PW 6),  who was going along on a scooter, rang up the  Police Control Room at 6.44 p.m. saying that a woman was shouting  "Bachao, Bachao" in a Fiat Car and that he saw a scuffle  going on  between the woman and the driver on one hand and  between the boy and the person sitting next to the driver on  the other. The man sitting next to the driver was the petitioner himself. The information given by Bhagwan Das was reduced  into writing  by the police officer, the report being ex.  PW  61A.  Bhagwan  Das  had  mentioned  over  the telephone that the number of the car was HRK 8930 but it was wrongly taken down as MRK 8930.      Inderjeet Singh (PW 9), another public-spirited citizen like  Bhagwan  Das,  who  works  in  the  Delhi  Development Authority as  a Junior  Engineer, chased the Fiat Car on his scooter, since  he heard  the shrieks  of a girl coming from the Fiat  Car and  saw the  boy and the girl coming with the two men  who were  sitting on  the front  seat.  As  he  was chasing the  car, the  boy was  showing to  him his bleeding shoulder through  the back wind screen of the car. Inderjeet Singh chased  the car over some distance, but whereas he was bound by  the traffic  rules and  had to  stop  at  the  red traffic signal,  the Fiat  car had  the liberty  to jump the signal  and  speed  away.  After  the  light  turned  green, Inderjeet Singh  resumed his  chase but  could not  find the car. He therefore went straight to the Rajinder Nagar Police Station and lodged his report, Ex. PW-9A. He told 515 the police  that he  saw a  scuffle between  the boy and the girl who  were seated  on the  back seat on one hand and the two men who were seated on the front seat in a Fiat car, HRK 8930. The police felt obsessed by their notorious difficulty that the  offence was  non-cognizable and  that the incident had taken  place  in  an  area  which  was  not  within  the "territorial jurisdiction"  of the Police Station. Inderjeet Singh  had   to  persuade  the  Police  do  the  needful  by impressing upon  them that  he had  come to lodge the report purely on  humanitarian grounds.  Inderjeet Singh lodged his report at  6.45 P.M and strangely, the Rajinder Nagar Police Station slept over the report for more than an hour.      At 10.15  P.M. the  petitioner and  his companion Billa visited the  Willingdon Hospital  because Billa  had  a  cut injury on  his head.  The features of the skiagrams taken by Sadhu Ram (PW 21) of Billa’s skull are indentical with those of the  skiagrams taken  by Satish  Aggarwal (PW  19) of his

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skull after  his arrest. The fingerprints on the X-ray slip, which were  taken on  the night  of the  incident  when  the accused went  to the Willingdon Hospital, are also proved to be of  Billa’s. In  addition to  these tell-tale  pieces  of evidence for  collecting which  due credit  must be given to the police,  the evidence,  regarding the  theft of the Fiat car, the  blood-group of  the accused,  the manner  of their arrest and  the recovery  of incriminating  weapons at their instance leave  not the  slightest doubt that it is they who committed the murder of Sanjay and Geeta. The Sessions Court and the  High Court  were therefore  right in  coming to the conclusion that  the two  accused are guilty of the offences of which they are charged.      On the  question of  sentence, the answers given by the petitioner when we questioned him on the 30th March, furnish no material at all for justifying the reduction of the death sentence to  imprisonment for  life. The  petitioner  is  an unmarried man  and appears to have no dependents. His father is gainfully employed and his mother, according to him, used to work  as a  nurse  in  a  hospital.  The  petitioner  has submitted to  us a  written application saying that he bears an unblemished past and is not a professional criminal.      We have given our anxious consideration to the question as to whether the imposition of the death sentence should be reviewed, but we are unable to find any reason for doing so. It is  true that  the murder  of the two particular children was not  pre-planned. But  that was  because the accused did not know that they would hit 516 upon  those   particular  children  that  evening.  What  is important is  that the accused had made all the preparations for committing  the murder  of a person or persons whom they would apparently  oblige by  offering a lift. The plan which they had  hatched was  that they  would offer a lift to some children,  try  to  extort  reason  from  their  parents  by kidnapping them and do the children to death in the event of any impediments  arising in the execution of their plan. The impediments here  were the  uncommon courage  of  the  brave little children  who did  not make  an abject  surrender  to their Destiny  and the stark fact which emerged during their molestation that  their father was a mere government servant whose salary  was too  small to  permit  the  payment  of  a handsome ransom.      We have  not the  slightest doubt that the death of the Chopra  children  was  caused  by  the  petitioner  and  his companion Billa  after  a  savage  planning  which  bears  a professional  stamp.  The  murder  was  most  certainly  not committed on  the spur  of the  moment as  a result  of some irresistible impulse which can be said to have overtaken the accused at  the crucial  moment. In other words, there was a planned motivation  behind the  crime though the accused had no personal  motive  to  commit  the  murder  of  these  two children. Any  two children  would have been good enough for them. The  accused had  loosened the handles of the doors of the car  so that  they should  fall down  when the children, after getting  into the car, close the doors behind them. By this process it was ensured that the children would get into a trap  like helpless  mice. They got into the car but could not get  out of  it. In  the  boot  of  the  car  were  kept formidable weapons which were ultimately used for committing the murder of the children. In addition, the accused carried sharp weapons  with them which explains the injury caused to Sanjay in  the car  itself. The  author of  that injury  was clearly the  petitioner since  his hands were more free than those of  Billa who  was on  the wheel. The injured children

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were taken to a park in order apparently to lull them into a false sense of security. The true purpose of doing so was to let the  dusk fall  so that  the most dastardly act could be committed under  the cover of darkness. So deep-laid was the strategy  to   which  they   adhered  to  the  last  without contrition of  any kind.  Their inhumanity defies all belief and description.      The  survival   of  an   orderly  society  demands  the extinction of  the life  of persons like Ranga and Billa who are  a  menace  to  social  order  and  security.  They  are professional murderers and deserve no sympathy even in terms of the evolving standards of decency of a maturing society. 517      The case  of the  petitioner cannot  be separated  from that of  Billa. The two sail in the same boat and must stand or fall  together. The petitioner was an active participator in the  whole expisode  and but for his willing cooperation, Billa could never have succeeded in his design. In fact, the petitioner was in the company of Billa right from the moment that the  children entered  their car until they themselves, Ranga and  Billa, entered  the military compartment and were arrested. In  between many  atrocities were  committed, many falsehoods uttered,  many escapades  achieved  and  many  an evidence concealed  or destroyed.  The petitioner’s  part in carrying out  the nefarious plan is no less significant than that of Billa and he is no less guilty than him. There is no room for  treating the  one differently from the other. They were hand in glove with each other.      We, therefore,  vacate the stay orders in regard to the execution of  the death  sentence imposed  on the petitioner and once  again uphold  the death sentence imposed upon him. We hope  that  the  President  will  dispose  of  the  mercy petition stated  to have  been filed  by the  petitioner  as expeditiously as he finds his convenience.      The writ is accordingly dismissed. N.K.A.                                   Petition dismissed. 518