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Serial baby killer acquitted in one more rape, murder case
By Shilpi Dogra - Jknewspoint.com
December 10, 2010
A local court today acquitted serial baby killer Darbara Singh in one
more rape and murder case. Darbara Singh had abducted a six year old
girl Tajvin from the area under the jurisdiction of model town police
station in the year of 2004 and after killing threw her body in the
bushes near Cheheru village situated on Jalandhar-Phagwara road.
The police recovered the body of the girl on the instance of Darbara
Singh from the bushes after he was arrested by the police in other
cases of killing girl children after raping them. Seventeen cases of
rape and killing girl children had been registered against Darbara
Singh in 2004.
He was sentenced to death by a local court in one case but the
sentence was converted to life imprisonment by the Punjab and Haryana
High Court. Of the total 17 cases of rape and killings, Darbara Singh
had been sentenced to life imprisonment in five cases. In the Tajvin
case registered against Darbara Singh on Sept. 2, 2004, the court of
additional sessions Judge BS Sidhu today acquitted the accused on the
grounds that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges. Darbara
Singh was produced in the court of the additional session judge this
afternoon.
Death
sentence for serial killer
January 8, 2008
A fast track court here sentenced to death a “serial baby killer” who
allegedly had killed over 20 children, mostly migrants, after kidnapping
them, a few years back.
Additional sessions judge I.S. Bajwa ordered to hang
Darbara Singh till death in the case relating to the murders of two
children Khursheed (5) and his cousin Ropu (6) in 2004.
While he was acquitted in three such cases, over 20
cases of murder, rape and sodomy of girls and boys are pending against
him.
In a complaint to the police in October 2004,
Mohammad Vakil- a resident of Darbhanga district in Bihar, now residing
at Basti Mithu here, alleged his son Khursheed and niece Ropu had gone
missing under mysterious circumstances.
Later their bodies were found from a sugarcane field
at a village on the Kala Sanghian road. An FIR under Sections 364 and
302 of the IPC was registered in this regard. Statement of one of the
prosecution witnesses Pritam Singh played vital role in convicting
Darbara Singh, an ex-serviceman.
The police a few months back formed a special team
headed by SP (traffic) Rakesh Kaushal, which nabbed the guilty on
October 30, 2004, to pursue the cases against after his acquittal in
three such cases.
Darbara Singh used to make migrants’ children his
victims as he felt it was because of a migrant labourer family of
adjoining Kapurthala district that he had to remain in jail for a decade.
According to he had already been sentenced to imprisonment for allegedly
raping and attempting to murder a migrant girl but was released after 10
years without completing full term from the Ludhiana jail for his `good
conduct’ in the jail.
Subsequently, he came to Jalandhar where he took a
room on rent in Model House locality and started working in a factory
and simultaneously started making migrant children his victims.
‘Baby killer’ acquitted in 2
cases for want of evidence
ExpressIndia.com
July 12, 2007
Darbara Singh, accused of kidnapping 23
children and killing 18 of them after molestation, was today acquitted
in yet another case for want of evidence. He was acquitted by the
court of District Sessions Judge Gurdev Singh in the murder case of
Sanju and Lakshmi. Sanju, daughter of Umesh Shastri of basti area,
went missing on August 28, 2004, while Lakshmi went missing on August
15, 2004.
Darbara had confessed that he had killed both the
girls and thrown their bodies in Raiya canal. But since the bodies of
the girls were not recovered, Darbara got acquitted.
Known as “baby killer”, Darbara Singh was yesterday,
too, acquitted in the murder cases of Satish, 6, and his sister Sona,
7. Both children went missing in 2004 from their house in Model Town
and later their bodies were recovered from a canal in Raiya in
Amritsar district. It was alleged that Darbara Singh had kidnapped
them and after molestation, had killed both siblings.
However, he is serving a life term for trying to
kill another girl child, Nishu, who was kidnapped by him. He had
thrown her body in the fields after cutting her neck, but some people
saw her and saved the child. A fast-track court in 2006 had sentenced
him to life imprisonment in the case.
In 2004, several children of migrant labourers went
missing from Jalandhar under mysterious circumstances within six
months. Darbara Singh used to kidnap them by alluring them with sweets
and other eatables. Darbara had said in his statement that he hated
migrant labourers as he had been booked long back in a case on the
allegations of migrant labourers and wanted to “teach them a lesson".
Serial child killer gets life term again
February 9, 2006
Serial
child killer Darbara Singh has been sentenced by a Punjab court to life
imprisonment for the second time.
A
fast-track court in Jalandhar on Wednesday sentenced the serial killer
to life term for the kidnapping and murder of the minor daughter of a
migrant labourer in the city in October 2004.
Darbara
Singh had earlier been sentenced similarly for the rape of a migrant
girl in Kapurthala in the mid-1990s. He was released from prison in
December 2003 for "good conduct" before the end of the first life term.
He was
accused of kidnapping, raping and sodomising 23 minor children after his
release. He used to target children of migrant labourers.
Darbara
Singh had earlier been dismissed from the Indian Army for attacking his
senior officer while on duty at Pathankot.
The
parents of the children killed and raped by him said after the verdict
that a life term was too less a punishment for Darbara Singh. They
demanded that he be hanged to death.
Devilish
Darbara
Remorseless ex-armyman slit
throats of 17 children and then raped them
Varinder Singh - Tribune India
November 5, 2004
HE remains unrepentant. He is
in full control of his ruthless self and can even flash a broad smile.
Arrest has not, in any way, made the alleged serial killer, Darbara
Singh, remorseful. "I have no remorse for having killed the children
of migrant labourers, as they were instrumental in sending me to jail,"
he says coolly
"I abducted children of migrants, and if any of
these girls or boys resisted my attempts, I would slit their throats
and simply dump or drown them. I also killed one Punjabi girl by
mistake and I am a bit shaken by this. But I had no alternative, as
she could have created problems for me. Similarly, I killed all babies
to eliminate any possibility of leaving behind a proof," he confesses.
What is intriguing is that despite tightened vigil,
he was never intercepted at a naka or by any police official, even as
he simply walked in and out of the city on his bicycle. "Nobody ever
suspected me. I thought I could carry on with my activities. Still, I
have no remorse. But at the same time, I think what was done by me was
wrong and I promise that I would never do it again," Darbara Singh
tells The Tribune.
"I don't dread anything. I think they (migrants)
did wrong to me. I celebrated almost each of the killings with liquor
and good food," he adds. This is in contrast to his other statement
about the use of liquor during his crimes; in this statement he had
denied that he used liquor at the time of committing crimes.
Similarly, no feeling of remorse was visible when
he was taken by the police to different sites, where he had dumped
bodies of his small and innocent victims. "It (crimes) never shook me
from inside. I still think whatever I did was right and it was the
demand of the time. I also think that in future I won't do anything
like this," says the alleged serial killer.
List of victims
-
Lacchmi, 5, d/o Ripudaman,
r/0 Basti Shiekh, gone missing on August 15, 2004, status - dead
-
Satish, 6, s/o Gopal, H.No.
598, Model Town Jalandhar, gone missing on April 18, 2004, status -
dead
-
Gudia, 10, sister of Satish,
status - dead
-
Tazbin, 10, d/o Maqsood, r/o
Avtaar Nagar Jalandhar, abducted on August 22, 2004, status - dead
-
Sanju Kumar, 5, s/o Umesh
Shastri, r/o Basti Shiekh, abducted on August 24, 2004, status -
dead
-
Poonam, 7, r/o Basti
Peerdaad, d/o Puna Ram, abducted on August 6, 2004, status - dead
-
Rajesh Kumar, 7 and his
sister Geeta, 5, children of Narbahadur of Leather Complex, abducted
on August 28, 2004, status - dead
-
Laloo Parsaad,4, r/o Leather
Complex, status - dead
-
Diksha, 10 and her sister
Asha, daughters of Gobind of Rasta Mohalla, abducted on April 18,
2004, Diksha killed, Asha escaped and saved
-
Rani, 9, r/o Jallowal Colony,
killed in Nakodar; Nishu, 9, r/o Urban Estate Phase II, abducted on
October 22, saved and admitted to the PGI, Chandigarh; Mumtaaz,
sister of Tazbin, of Avtaar Nagar, escaped
-
Shankar, 8, s/o Akhilesh,
r/o GTB Nagar, abducted along Gudia and Satish but escaped
-
Amrit, 5 and his sister Karu
of Leather Complex, status - abducted and killed
-
Ravina, 4, d/o Mohd. Aziz,
r/o Shastri Nagar, abducted on June 29, 2004, saved
-
Patal Kumari, d/o Bharat
Bhushan, r/o Basti Bawa Khel, abducted on June 29, 2004, saved
lNitika, 3, d/o Bir Bahadur, r/o Basti Danishmandan, abducted on
August 16, 2004, saved
-
Rajesh Kumar, 5, s/o Mast
Lal, Basti Bawa Khel, abducted on August 16, 2004, saved
-
Jatinder, 9, s/o Rudra Ram,
r/o Leather Complex, abducted on June 17, 2004, status - killed
-
Puja, 8, d/o Ram Udhar,
status - killed, her brother Deepak, 4, killed.
Toffees turn
out to be his nemesis
Toffees, which were used by the alleged baby killer,
finally turned out to be his nemesis. This ex-serviceman-turned-serial
killer used sweets, samosas and crackers to lure his victims.
Darbara Singh, resident of Jallupur Khera village
of Amritsar, perhaps did not know while committing crime that one of
his own sweet weapons - toffees- would have a bitter taste for him and
would lead to his arrest one day. This day came on the morning of
October 29, when he was intercepted by a police party led by Sadar SHO
Pritam Singh and the CIA In Charge Sub Inspector Nirmal Singh. Darbara
Singh was going from Leather Complex to Kapurthala on his bicycle.
He could have slipped out of the police dragnet by
posing as an ex-serviceman had he not been carrying a bag containing a
handful of toffees, which made policemen suspicious. As he was busy
answering the questions of the police party, it was his resemblance to
the sketch of the baby killer prepared by the Jalandhar police in the
last week of October that aroused further suspicion.
Darbara Singh had been nurturing a grudge against
the migrant labourer community for their "role" in his conviction in
1996 in a triple attempt to murder case in Kapurthala. His modus
operandi was to lure his victims using toffees, samosas, sugarcane
juice and sweets. Then he would take them to a secluded place.
According to investigations, in most cases, he
would slit the throat of his victim and subject the bodies to attempt
to rape. "I did this so that there would be no shrieks of victims," he
says.
"Our officers suspected the accused the very first
moment they saw him carrying a bag of toffees. Thereafter, an informer
recognised him After this, he was put to sustained questioning, which
yielded its results. He confessed to everything, despite his
appearance of being a hard nut to crack," says Mr Gurpreet Singh
Bhullar, SSP and the officer behind the cracking of the crime.
Police sources revealed an interesting story. As
soon as Darbara Singh was intercepted, he started reeling out
everything. "At the very first moment when he was stopped, he told the
police party that they had reached the right place. Then he requested
police officials not to beat him up, as he was ready to come out with
minute details of the crimes committed by him. In fact, what brought
success to us was the sustained study of the modus operandi adopted by
this psychopath. What alarmed us was the almost similar kind of method
used by him against all his victims. However, what baffled us a bit
was the recovery of some bodies from different spots," said Mr Bhullar.
Though at the first instance Darbara Singh has
admitted to have killed 17 of his victims (six of his victims were
lucky enough to survive), the actual number of victims could be more,
say police sources. "Our suspicion is based on similar abductions in
Kapurthala district and recovery of two more mutilated bodies of
babies in jungles of Jallupur Khera village of Amritsar district,"
says an official.
"What had made our task difficult was that the baby
killer was not running a gang and he had no permanent address. This
led to some delay in cracking the crime," said Mr Bhullar.
Serial killer leads to victims, and it’s gross
October 30, 2004
A day
after nabbing serial killer Darbara Singh, the police exhumed the bodies
of two of his recent victims from a sugarcane field here.
The
killer led the police to the field on the Jalandhar-Kalasanghia road
where he had buried five-year-old Khurshid and six-year-old Ruku,
reported missing since October 24. Both children were cousins and
belonged to Darbhanga in Bihar.
Khurshid’s father, Mohammad Vakeel, identified the
bodies and said that Ruku was the daughter of his younger brother who
lived in Himachal Pradesh. Vakeel said that Ruku had come to Jalandhar
only a few days ago before she went missing along with Khurshid from
Jalandhar’s J.P. Nagar locality.
Of the 17
children killed by Darbara Singh, the bodies of three were recovered
before his arrest yesterday. All three, Rani, Asha and Lalu Parsad, were
children of migrant labourers.
Darbara
Singh, who was taken by the police team led by SSP G.S. Bhullar to
identify the site where he committed the crime, later said that he had
killed Khurshid and Ruku by slitting their throats after sexually
abusing them on October 25.
The
police had a tough time locating the bodies buried in the field due to
the dense crop of sugarcane. Khurshid’s body was found lying on the back
with his head turned slightly towards the left, while Ruku’s body was
recovered in a highly decomposed state as she had virtually been
beheaded.
As soon
as the news of the bodies being found spread in the area, a large number
of people gathered at the site and watched in horror. A couple of
onlookers even tried to hit the accused.
The
police also recovered a bottle of rum and a glass from the field.
Darbara Singh said he had consumed the rum before committing the crime.
The police took the bottle and glass into custody for matching
fingerprints.
Meanwhile, police teams have been despatched to Tarn Taran and Rayyia,
where Darbara Singh said that he had killed most of his victims by
drowning them.
Bhullar
said that Nishu, an 11-year-old girl who was injured by Darbara Singh
near Adampur, was undergoing treatment at PGI, Chandigarh, and had
immediately identified the accused on seeing his picture in the
newspapers today.
Serial killer leads cops to bodies of 2 victims
October 30, 2004
Even as
the local police today recovered the bodies of two children, Khursheed
(4) and his cousin Roku (6), who were allegedly sexually assaulted and
killed by “baby killer” Darbara Singh, from a pit on the roadside near
Kadianwali village, the court of Ilaqa Magistrate K.K. Kareer remanded
him in 10 days’ police custody.
Khursheed,
a son of Mohammed Vaqil, and his cousin Roku were abducted by Darbara
Singh from near their house in Basti Mithu on October 25.
Darbara
Singh also identified the spot in Shah Changi village where he had
dumped the body of another child, Laloo Parsad (6), after murdering him
on August 16.
After his
medical examination and court appearance, the police took Darbara Singh
to a place near Kadianwali village, where the accused located the pit in
which he had dumped the bodies of Khursheed and Roku after killing them
on October 25.
The
bodies, which were recovered in the presence of an Executive Magistrate,
had not yet decomposed. While the body of Khursheed had clothes on,
Roku’s body was naked and the throat had been slit. ..“Darbara Singh
killed Khursheed as he feared he could identify him,” said Mr Gurpreet
Singh Bhullar, SSP, who lead the recovery operation. “We will also take
him to the Khadoor Sahib-Rayyia area, where Darbara Singh has confessed
to have dumped a large number of bodies,” added Mr Bhullar.
Meanwhile, Nishu (8), who had escaped from the clutches of Darbara Singh
and was found lying seriously injured in fields near Jandu Singha
village last week, has identified Darbara Singh from his pictures in
various newspapers, it was learnt. She is at present being treated at
the PGI in Chandigarh.
Search for 17 children ende
October 30, 2004
The
district police today claimed to have solved the mystery of 17 missing
children with the arrest of a 52-year-old ex-Army personnel, who
allegedly raped and killed all the kids.
District
police chief G.P.S. Bhullar said the accused, Darbara Singh, has
confessed to abducting at least 21 children and has said that he
committed the crimes to avenge the 10 years he spent in prison.
At a
press conference here, the SSP said police had prepared a
computer-generated image of the ‘‘killer’’, and on a tip-off, had set a
trap for him at Basti Bawa Khel from where they arrested him.
The SSP
said Singh had got into trouble even during his stint in the Army. He
had allegedly lobbed a hand-grenade at Major V.K. Sharma’s house in
Pathankot after an altercation. The Major’s son and wife were injured in
the explosion. Singh was arrested in the case and sent to judicial
custody. But after a trial, he was acquitted and reinstated in the Army.
Bhullar
said Singh started selling his quota of CSD liquor to migrant labourers
during his Kapurthala posting. He also took to molesting girls in these
colonies and was sentenced to 30 years in prison after some migrant
labourers lodged a complaint. His sentence was later revised and he was
released in December 2003.
Singh
used to live in a rented accommodation at Model House near his in-laws
home. He had managed to get the job of a security guard in a leather
factory at Basti Bawa Khel showing his Army credentials.
Serial baby killer held
TribuneIndia.com
Jalandhar, October 29, 2004
A spectre of fear terryfying local residents for the
past over seven months almost vanished in this morning as a cruel serial
baby killer, Darbara Singh, who not only ruthlessly killed 17 innocent
children of migrant labourers here but also surpassed all boundaries of
cruelty by allegedly subjecting his dead victims, mostly girls, to rape
attempts, was finally arrested by the local police.
Darbara Singh, an ex-serviceman, nurtured a grudge
against migrant labourers, as he felt that it was because of a migrant
labourer family of Kapurthala that he had to waste 10 “precious years”
of his life in jail. He was sentenced to imprisonment by a Kapurthala
court for 30 years for allegedly raping and attempting to murder a
daughter of a migrant labourer. He was released from the Ludhiana jail
on December 3 last year after having spent 10 years in jail. For his
“good conduct” in the jail, his sentence was reduced from 30 to 10 years.
His hatred against migrant labourers was so intense
that he asserted in front of the Jalandhar SSP, Mr Gurpreet Singh
Bhullar, that he could have killed more children of migrant labourers
had he not been arrested by the police “so soon”.
Darbara Singh, 52, who has three children and who was
shunted out of his house by his wife for his “bad habits,” also admitted
that he had dumped the bodies of most of his 17 innocent victims near a
bridge on the Rayya-Khadoor Sahib road after subjecting them to rape or
sodomy.
During the past seven months, a total of 23 children,
mostly below the age of 10, had gone missing from the city. Of them six
were recovered by the police. The abduction’s of children began in March
this year when two sisters, Asha and Diksha, were abducted from the
local company bagh.
“Though he has confessed to having killed 17 children
— 15 girls and two boys — we are still interrogating him to elicit more
details. We had to lay a number of traps for him and I think he is
India’s first serial killer who has been so barbaric. He has killed 17
children. What is more stunning is his confession that in a fit of rage
he even tried to rape or sodomise dead bodies of his victims,” said Mr
Bhullar.
Darbara Singh, originally a resident of Jallupur
Khaira village near Beas in Amritsar district, allegedly lobbed a hand
grenade at the house of his senior officer, Major V.K. Sharma, after
having an altercation with the latter while he was posted at Air Force
Station at Pathankot in 1975. The wife and teenaged son of the officer
were seriously injured. He was arrested but acquitted after the trial.
He was also arrested in three cases of attempt to
murder by the Kapurthala police and was subsequently sentenced by the
court to undergo imprisonment for 30 years. From Kapurthala he was
shifted to the Jalandhar central jail and then to the Ludhiana Central
Jail where he spent five years before he was released on December 3 last
year for his “good conduct” on the basis of his mercy petition.
Filled with a sense of revenge, Darbara Singh came to
Jalandhar where he took a room on rent in Model House locality and
started working in a factory in the Leather Complex area of the
cityhouse in Urban Estate and simultaneously started targeting children
of migrant labourers.
According to Mr Rajpal Sandhu, Mr Rakesh Kaushal,
both SPs, Mr Rajjit Singh, Mr Rajinder Singh and Mr Charanjit Singh, all
DSPs and part of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by Mr
Bhullar for cracking the crime, Darbara Singh, used his cycle for
committing crime and enticed children by offering sweets and eatables to
them in localities dominated by migrant labourers. His preferred time to
perform his ‘operation’ was between 10 am and 12.30 pm when most of
migrant labour was away to factories.
On how the serial killer was nabbed by the police, Mr
Bhullar said it was possible only after the SIT studied the modus
operandi adopted by the suspect in detail and a sketch was made on the
basis of information gathered from diferent sources. They got
information that a person resembling the sketch was going on his cycle
along with a bag of toffees. SHO Pritam Singh was despatched to nab the
person, who turned out to be Darbara Singh. |
