Fallen City: A Double Murder, Political Insanity, and Delhi’s Descent from Grace – Sudeep Chakravarti

In late August 1978, Geeta and Sanjay Chopra stepped out of their home in a quiet, upscale neighborhood in Delhi. Geeta, an aspiring teenager, was scheduled to record a program at All India Radio, and her younger brother, Sanjay, accompanied her for company. The two teenagers never returned. Four days later, their brutally disfigured bodies were discovered by cowherds in a deserted, isolated corner of the Ridge—a thickly forested area on the western outskirts of the city. The sheer savagery of the killing traumatized the capital and transfixed an entire nation. The crisis escalated to the highest corridors of power, forcing the Prime Minister to answer intense questions in Parliament, while police forces across multiple states were mobilized in a massive manhunt for the killers.

In this gripping, first full-length account of the infamous crime and its volatile aftermath, bestselling author and veteran journalist Sudeep Chakravarti reconstructs the horrific event. Drawing from rare eyewitness accounts, extensive archival research, official court records, and deeply personal original interviews, Chakravarti sheds fresh light on a tragedy that reshaped urban India's sense of safety.

The murder of the Chopra siblings took place during an exceptionally unsettled and explosive phase in modern Indian history. The capital was caught in a fragile limbo—sandwiched between the lingering terror of Indira Gandhi’s mid-1970s Emergency and the impending horrors of the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms. Against this haunting backdrop of political blood, vengeance, and societal shift, Fallen City explores the hunt for the killers and the deep-seated trauma of those grim days. It is a compelling, atmospheric, and unputdownable journey through the literal and metaphorical darkness that settled on Delhi.