THE END OF INNOCENCE

Sudeep Chakravarti's Fallen City is an in-depth account of a double murder that shook the nation in 1978

- Manjula Padmanabhan

FALLEN CITY: A Double Murder, Political Insanity, and Delhi's Descent from Grace
By Sudeep Chakravarti
ALEPH
248 pages; ₹799

The focus of author and journalist Sudeep Chakravarti's book is the 1978 kidnap and murder of siblings Geeta, 17 and Sanjay, 15, in New Delhi. They lived with their parents, Navy captain Madan Mohan Chopra and his wife Roma, in the Service Officers' Enclave in Dhaula Kuan. On August 26, en route to the All India Radio studios on Parliament Street, the teenagers apparently hitched a ride in a Fiat, from the Gole Dak Khana roundabout. Four days later, their partially decomposed bodies were discovered in the forested area known as the Ridge.