How a photograph solved India's most notorious 1978 manhunt: the Chopra children murder case

In the late 1970s, crime reporting in Mumbai was a competitive battleground, with journalists hunting leads from police sources in the smoke-filled rooms of Crawford Market and the press room at the Police Commissioner's office. One such contact revealed the story of Billa, a young drifter from Sion Koliwada who had become a terror in parts of Dharavi and Powai Lake, robbing homes and accosting couples. When Billa escaped from a Crime Branch cell on May 1, 1978—Maharashtra Day and Labour Day, when senior officers were occupied—the escape became major news, much to police embarrassment.

The significance of Billa's escape would later become apparent when a far more serious crime shocked the nation. On August 26, 1978, Geeta Chopra, aged 16, and her brother Sanjay, aged 14—children of Madan Mohan Chopra, a Navy Captain—were kidnapped while en route to the All India Radio office at Sansad Marg in Delhi to participate in a radio programme. Their bodies were discovered two days later in the Ridge area, marking a crime that would captivate national attention. On August 31, 1978, police recovered a mustard Fiat car in the Majlis Park area, though initial investigations raised questions about its connection to the crime.

The timing of this horrific murder coincided with intense political turbulence. The Morarji Desai-led government was struggling with coalition pressures and internal rivalries, while the Congress party—having lost the previous year's election—waited to return to power. The police administration and officials faced mounting pressure as the Shah Commission investigated excesses from the Emergency years. A child kidnapping and murder case compounded the government's difficulties at a particularly fragile political moment.

Four months after Billa's escape, the crime's resolution emerged through an investigative breakthrough. Billa, along with his associate Ranga, were arrested for the Chopra children murders. The case, which had initially seemed like separate threads—a fugitive criminal and a heinous kidnapping—converged through investigative work, with a photograph reportedly playing a crucial role in sealing the manhunt and connecting the suspects to the crime.

The case exemplified both the intensity of crime reporting during that era and the pressure law enforcement faced under an increasingly unstable government. For journalists covering the crime beat, the Chopra case represented the kind of major story that defined careers, yet it also underscored the gravity of crimes that transcended routine criminal activity to become matters of national concern and political consequence.