Shimla, Dec 12,
The family of four-year-old Shimla murder victim Yug Gupta has approached the Supreme Court, challenging the Himachal Pradesh High Court’s judgment of September 23 that commuted the death sentences of two convicts and acquitted the third. Family sources confirmed that Yug’s father, Vinod Gupta, has filed a Special Leave Petition before the apex court, and the petition has now been accepted for hearing. The family’s decision marks the latest step in an eleven-year pursuit of justice that began in 2014, when Yug’s abduction and brutal killing left the city traumatised.
In 2018, the district and sessions court had convicted Chandra Sharma, Vikrant Bakshi and Tejinder Pal, awarding all three the death penalty after accepting a prosecution case built on more than 100 witness statements and a CID charge sheet running over 2,300 pages. The crime, committed in chilling detail, involved kidnapping the four-year-old for ransom, torturing him, forcing him to consume liquor, and finally tying his body to a heavy stone before dumping him in a Shimla Municipal Corporation water tank. Even today, the incident is remembered with horror by residents who recall the shock and grief that swept Shimla at the time.
However, the High Court’s 2025 judgment altered the course of the case significantly. A division bench of Justice Vivek Singh Thakur and Justice Rakesh Kanthla held that the record did not show the convicts to be beyond reform, reducing the death penalty awarded to Chandra Sharma and Vikrant Bakshi to life imprisonment “till their last breath,” and acquitting Tejinder Pal for lack of sufficient evidence. This decision left the victim’s family devastated. Relatives said the acquittal of Tejinder, who they allege was involved in keeping Yug confined and later helping to transport the child in a cardboard box, had “shattered” them. They also demanded that a passport should not be issued to him and that no parole should be granted to Chandra Sharma under any circumstance.
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Speaking about the long struggle, Vinod Gupta said that despite the prolonged ordeal, the family remains firm in its belief that the trial court’s decision reflected the gravity of the crime committed. “Even after all these years, the pain is the same. For what happened to our son, only the death penalty is justice. We have complete faith that the Supreme Court will restore the punishment awarded by the trial court,” he said.
As the case now moves to the Supreme Court, Shimla once again confronts memories of one of its most disturbing criminal episodes—a crime so brutal that it still sends chills down the spine of anyone who remembers how a four-year-old child was abducted, tortured and murdered in a manner that left a scar on the city’s collective memory.
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