Darbara Singh was arrested in Jalandhar, in the Indian state of Punjab, on the morning of October 29, 2004. For seven months children from the city's migrant laborer families had been going missing. The Tribune of Chandigarh reported that 23 children, most of them under ten, had disappeared since March, and that police had recovered six of them. Singh, a 52-year-old former serviceman, told police after his arrest that he had killed 17 children, 15 girls and two boys. Senior Superintendent of Police Gurpreet Singh Bhullar called him India's first serial killer.
The courts did not accept all of that account. Singh was tried in a series of separate cases. In January 2008 a fast-track court sentenced him to death for the deaths of two cousins, Khursheed and Ronku, but in July 2009 the Punjab and Haryana High Court found the evidence unreliable, declined to confirm the sentence and acquitted him. In April 2008 a Jalandhar court sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder of eight-year-old Diksha, with other charges, and the High Court upheld that conviction in 2013. He was also convicted of kidnapping and trying to kill a young girl who survived, a judgment the High Court upheld the same year. Several other cases ended in acquittal.
Singh came from Jallupur Khera, a village near Beas in Amritsar district. The Tribune and the news agency UNI spelled the name Jallupur Khaira in their reports. When he was arrested, The Tribune reported that he was 52, had three children, and had been put out of the family home by his wife over what the paper called his bad habits. His date of birth was not reported.
He served in the armed forces. In 1975, according to The Tribune and UNI, he was posted at the Air Force Station in Pathankot when he quarreled with his senior officer, a major. He was suspected of throwing a hand grenade at the officer's house after the argument, and the officer's wife and teenage son were seriously hurt. He was arrested and tried, and he was acquitted.
In the 1990s Singh was arrested by the Kapurthala police in three cases of attempted murder. A court in Kapurthala sentenced him to 30 years in prison in a case involving the daughter of a migrant laborer; the charge was attempted murder, with other charges. The Tribune dated that conviction to 1996, and UNI dated the arrests to 1997.
He served his sentence in three prisons, according to both reports: first at Kapurthala, then at the Jalandhar Central Jail, and then at the Ludhiana Central Jail. On December 3, 2003, he was released from Ludhiana on a mercy petition. The Tribune reported that his sentence had been cut from 30 years to 10 for good conduct, though the same report also said he had spent five years at Ludhiana. UNI also gave about five years at Ludhiana.
Police and reporters linked what followed to that conviction. Singh, The Tribune reported, blamed a migrant laborer's family from Kapurthala for the years he had spent in prison, and he held a grudge against migrant laborers in general. After his release he rented a room in Jalandhar and took a job in a factory.
The Tribune reported after the arrest that the abductions began in March 2004, when two sisters were taken from a public garden in the city. Police later said the man responsible rode a bicycle, offered children sweets and snacks, and favored the late morning hours, roughly 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., when most parents were at work.
The police account, given after the arrest, was that Singh had moved freely in and out of the city on his bicycle while the search went on. In an interview published by The Tribune on November 5, 2004, he said he had never been stopped at a police checkpoint or questioned, and that no one had suspected him.
On April 18, 2004, a man reported to the police that his two granddaughters, Diksha, about eight, and her younger sister, about six, had gone to play in a public garden in Jalandhar that day and had not come home. According to the High Court's later judgment, two other children told police that a man in a white shirt and coffee-colored trousers had led the sisters away, promising to get them a shuttlecock and racket.
Two days later, on April 20, the police were told that the younger sister was at the police station in Khadoor Sahib, in Amritsar district. Her grandfather and another relative identified her there. Diksha was later found dead.
The Tribune's reporting after the arrest named other missing children and linked them to Singh through his statements to police. On October 30, 2004, the paper reported that he had linked himself in statements to police to the death of a six-year-old boy on August 16.
A ten-year-old girl from Jalandhar disappeared on August 22, 2004, while playing outside. Police later told The Tribune that Singh had lured her with sweets. She was found dead about a week later. Her parents told The Tribune they wanted the killer hanged, and that they had no photograph of her left, having given their only copy to searchers. Kapurthala police registered a case at Phagwara in September 2004, and it was later passed to the Jalandhar police, who were investigating the other cases.
On October 18, 2004, a young girl was playing with other children outside her home at about 11 a.m. A neighbor saw a man with a bicycle near the children. That evening, at about 6:30, a clerk in a nearby village saw a man cycling with a girl on the carrier and handing her something like a toffee.
She was missing that night, and her father reported it to the police on October 19. She was found alive that day. The Tribune reported on October 31 that she had recognized Singh from photographs printed in the newspapers.
On October 25, 2004, two cousins went missing near their homes in Basti Mithu, a Jalandhar neighborhood. Khursheed, about five, was the son of a migrant worker from Darbhanga district in Bihar. Ronku, about six, was his father's niece; she had come to Jalandhar from her village only a week or so earlier, according to the High Court. The children were playing near their homes at about 2 p.m. when they vanished.
Khursheed's father reported them missing, and on October 28, 2004, at 7 p.m., the police registered a first information report for kidnapping. A daily diary entry of October 27 had recorded that no offense was made out, a point the High Court later found unexplained.
A local man came forward to say that at about 2:15 p.m. on October 25 he had seen a man of about 50, clean-shaven and with a mole on his right eyebrow, riding a bicycle toward the canal with two children. He did not report it until three days later.
Senior Superintendent Bhullar had set up a special investigation team for the abductions. The Tribune named its members as Superintendents of Police Rajpal Sandhu and Rakesh Kaushal and Deputy Superintendents Rajjit Singh, Rajinder Singh and Charanjit Singh. UNI later reported that Kaushal led the team that made the arrest. The team studied the abductor's methods and, late in October, prepared a sketch of the suspect from information gathered from several sources.
On the morning of October 29, 2004, police received a tip that a man who looked like the sketch was cycling with a bag of toffees. A party led by the Sadar station house officer, Pritam Singh, and Crime Investigation Agency sub-inspector Nirmal Singh stopped Darbara Singh as he cycled toward Kapurthala. Bhullar credited the arrest to the officers' suspicion over the toffees, an informer's identification and persistent questioning. According to the police account in The Tribune, Singh told the officers they had the right man, asked not to be beaten, and offered to tell them everything.
The High Court's 2009 judgment gave a different account of the identification: the witness from the Khursheed and Ronku case spotted him at a police checkpoint and told officers he was the man he had seen. The court's 2013 judgment in Diksha's case said he was caught near the spot after a witness identified him and he tried to run.
The Tribune reported that the investigation had been slowed because Singh had no fixed address and worked alone, outside any gang.
Singh told police he had killed 17 children, 15 of them girls, and that six children had survived. Police told The Tribune they believed the true number might be higher, citing similar abductions in Kapurthala district and two more bodies of very young children found near his home village. He also told Bhullar, the paper reported, that he could have killed more children had he not been caught so soon.
On October 30, 2004, a magistrate remanded him to ten days of police custody. That day, according to The Tribune, Khursheed and Ronku were found dead after he led police to them. Bhullar said he would also be taken to the Khadoor Sahib area of Amritsar district in connection with other cases.
In the November 5 interview, Singh said he felt no remorse for killing the children of migrant laborers, whom he blamed for his imprisonment. He said he had killed a Punjabi girl by mistake and had been shaken by it. He said he had marked each killing with liquor and a good meal, contradicting an earlier statement that he had not been drinking. He said at one point that he regretted what he had done and would not do it again, and at another that the killings had been justified by his circumstances. Police told the paper he showed no remorse when taken to the places where bodies had been left.
None of these statements was tested in court as a whole. The trials that followed dealt with individual children, and in each the prosecution had to prove the charge by evidence.
The cases were heard separately in Jalandhar. By January 2008, The Tribune reported, Singh had been acquitted in three of them, and more than 20 cases of murder and other offenses against children were still pending. UNI put the number of pending cases at nearly a dozen. The Tribune reported that the special team under Kaushal had been re-formed a few months earlier to pursue the cases after the acquittals.
On January 7, 2008, Additional Sessions Judge I. S. Bajwa of the fast-track court in Jalandhar convicted Singh of murder, kidnapping for murder and causing the disappearance of evidence in the Khursheed and Ronku case and sentenced him to death, with fines. UNI reported that Singh was 55. Kaushal called the verdict a major achievement for the prosecution. The Tribune reported that the testimony of the last-seen witness had played a vital part in the conviction.
Two days later Singh was moved from the Jalandhar jail, which had recently seen rioting, to the Patiala Central Jail, the only jail in Punjab with facilities for hanging. The Tribune reported that he was placed in a special cell. Six other condemned prisoners were held there, and the jail superintendent, Jeewan Garg, said every one of them except Singh had sought mercy from the higher courts. Patiala had not carried out an execution since June 16, 1989.
On April 25, 2008, Additional District and Sessions Judge B. K. Mehta convicted Singh of murder, with other charges, in Diksha's case and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The case rested on the evidence of three children: Diksha's younger sister, who had escaped, and the two children who had seen the girls led away. All three identified him in court as the man who came on a bicycle and took the sisters.
On December 10, 2010, Additional Sessions Judge B. S. Sandhu acquitted Singh in the case of the ten-year-old girl whose body had been found in September 2004. The Tribune did not report the court's reasons. It reported that Singh was then linked to 23 cases and that more than ten were still pending.
Singh appealed his death sentence, and the state's reference for confirmation of the sentence came before a division bench of Justices Mehtab Singh Gill and Jitendra Chauhan. Vandana Malhotra argued his appeal; Additional Advocate General Satinder Singh Gill appeared for Punjab. The court gave its judgment on July 30, 2009.
It found the prosecution case weak at almost every point. The last-seen witness, the judges said, had kept silent for three days although he knew that children were being abducted in the area; had he really seen what he described, he would have told the parents or the police at once. The court called him a planted witness, relying on an earlier ruling that a witness who stayed silent for two days could not be believed.
The delay in registering the first information report was unexplained, and so was the diary entry that recorded no offense. Police said they had recovered a liquor bottle and a glass from a field on October 30, 2004, and that Singh's fingerprints were on them. But the items were kept at the police station for about ten days before they went to the Forensic Science Laboratory on November 10, and neither the inquest reports nor the site plan mentioned them. The court held that the delay raised a suspicion of tampering. The recovery witnesses were mostly officials; no independent villagers signed the recovery memos, and a deputy superintendent's evidence on who was present conflicted with a revenue officer's. No DNA test was done, a point the defense pressed.
Applying the Supreme Court's tests for convictions resting on circumstantial evidence, the bench held that the prosecution had failed to complete the chain of circumstances. It declined to confirm the death sentence, allowed the appeal, set aside the conviction and acquitted Singh, giving him the benefit of the doubt. He was to be released unless wanted in another case; he was, and he stayed in custody.
The Tribune's report the next day led with the court's call for police in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh to give up what it called archaic investigation methods and train officers in scientific ones. The bench said it was regrettable that the prosecution had not proved every link in the chain.
Singh's appeal in Diksha's case was heard by Justices Jasbir Singh and Inderjit Singh, with G. S. Lalli for the appellant and Additional Advocate General B. S. Bhalla for the state. The defense argued that he had been falsely implicated and that the child witnesses had been coached.
On February 20, 2013, the court rejected both claims. The case had begun with a report of missing children, not with an accusation against Singh. The three children's accounts agreed with each other and with the medical evidence, nothing in cross-examination suggested coaching, and none of the witnesses had any reason to lie. All three had identified him. The bench held the case proved beyond reasonable doubt and dismissed the appeal. The trial court's sentence of life imprisonment for murder and five years for the abduction offense, to run concurrently, stood.
The appeal in the case of the girl who survived was heard by Justices M. Jeyapaul and Anita Chaudhry. The trial court had convicted Singh of kidnapping and attempted murder. Lalli argued that the prosecution had shown no motive and that the witnesses came forward only after Singh's arrest in another case.
On November 13, 2013, the bench dismissed the appeal. The girl had named Singh in court as the man who took her. The neighbor and the clerk who saw him with her identified him soon after his arrest; the court accepted that no identification parade was held because his photographs had already appeared in the newspapers. A knife was recovered on his disclosure, and the medical evidence and the weapon showed an intention to kill. The judges accepted that the police had found no motive, but held that the absence of a proven motive did not defeat the prosecution's case.
The number 17 comes from Singh's own statements to police in October 2004. It was reported by The Tribune and UNI, but no court tested it as a total. Police at the time suggested the true number might be higher; later reports in The Tribune linked him to about 22 or 23 cases or killings, and UNI wrote of nearly two dozen children. These are counts of cases and suspicions, not findings.
In court, Singh was convicted of one murder, Diksha's, and of the attempted murder of one other child. He was acquitted in the Khursheed and Ronku case, in the Phagwara case, and in at least three other cases decided before January 2008. How the remaining cases ended was not reported.
The reports also differ on detail. The Tribune gave Khursheed's age as four in 2004 and five in later reports; the High Court gave about five. The Tribune in 2004 and UNI in 2008 described the two cousins as boys, while the High Court described Ronku as a girl, the niece of Khursheed's father, and The Tribune in 2009 also called her his niece. The second cousin's name appears in the papers as Roku and Ropu as well as Ronku, the court's spelling. The High Court's 2013 judgment in the survivor's case gives the arrest date in that case as November 29, 2004, while the other judgments and The Tribune give October 29. The Tribune in 2008 said the special team made the arrest on October 30.
1975: Posted at the Air Force Station in Pathankot; suspected of a grenade attack on a senior officer's house; tried and acquitted.
1996 or 1997: Convicted in Kapurthala in a case involving a migrant laborer's daughter; sentenced to 30 years.
December 3, 2003: Released from the Ludhiana Central Jail on a mercy petition.
March 2004: The first abductions in Jalandhar later linked to him, according to The Tribune.
April 18, 2004: Diksha and her younger sister are taken from a public garden in Jalandhar; the sister is found alive on April 20, and Diksha is later found dead.
August 22, 2004: A ten-year-old girl disappears in Jalandhar; a case is registered at Phagwara in September.
October 18, 2004: A young girl is abducted; she is found alive the next morning.
October 25, 2004: Khursheed and Ronku go missing in Basti Mithu, Jalandhar.
October 28, 2004: First information report registered in the Khursheed and Ronku case.
October 29, 2004: Singh is arrested and tells police he killed 17 children.
October 30, 2004: Remanded to ten days of police custody; the cousins' bodies are recovered.
By January 2008: Acquitted in three cases.
January 7, 2008: Sentenced to death by Additional Sessions Judge I. S. Bajwa in the Khursheed and Ronku case.
January 8 to 9, 2008: Moved to the Patiala Central Jail.
April 25, 2008: Sentenced to life imprisonment by Additional District and Sessions Judge B. K. Mehta for Diksha's murder, with other charges.
July 30, 2009: The Punjab and Haryana High Court declines to confirm the death sentence and acquits him in the Khursheed and Ronku case.
December 10, 2010: Acquitted in the Phagwara case by Additional Sessions Judge B. S. Sandhu.
February 20, 2013: The High Court upholds his conviction and life sentence in Diksha's case.
November 13, 2013: The High Court upholds his conviction for kidnapping and attempted murder in the survivor's case.