Serial child killer dies, kin refuse to cremate

Aman Sood 

Tribune News Service

Patiala, June 10

The body of serial child killer Darbara Singh, 57, who was on death row, has been lying in the mortuary of Government Rajindra Hospital here for the past four days. The killer’s family won’t claim it for cremation. 

Darbara Singh, an ex-serviceman, targeted children of migrant labourers. He was sentenced by a Kapurthala court to 30 years in 1993 but was set free in December 2003 — his sentence reduced to 10 years for good conduct. He was back in jail within a year for rape and attempted murder of another child.  Such was his hatred for children that he told the then Jalandhar SSP that he would have killed more had he not been arrested.

He confessed he had dumped the bodies of most of his 17 victims near a bridge on the Rayya-Khadoor Sahib road, after subjecting them to rape or sodomy.

“We had asked the Jalandhar police to request his wife and children to claim the body, but they have refused to do so,” said Rajan Kapoor, Jail Superintendent, Patiala. “We will now approach the local court for permission to cremate the body.” Originally from Jallupur Khaira village near Beas in Amritsar district, Darbara Singh was accused of lobbying a hand grenade at the house of a senior officer while posted at the Pathankot Air Force Station in 1975. The wife and teenaged son of the officer were seriously injured. He was arrested but acquitted after the trial.

Arrested in three cases of attempt to murder by the Kapurthala police, he was subsequently sentenced to 30 years’ jail. He was shifted to the Jalandhar Central Jail and then the Ludhiana Central Jail and was released in December 2003. 

He was arrested again in 2004 for rape and attempted murder and lodged in the Patiala Central Jail; he died in hospital on June 5, 2018.