The release of Raakh on Prime Video has brought back a question that resurfaces every time India revisits one of its most disturbing crimes through a film, a book, a documentary or a television series. Why do some crimes remain frozen in public memory long after the court proceedings have ended, the perpetrators have been punished, and entire generations have grown up in the years since? Why do names such as Ranga-Billa, Jessica Lall, Nithari, the Tandoor murder case and Nirbhaya continue to evoke an immediate emotional response years after the crimes were committed? Even among people who were not born when some of these events occurred.The answer lies partly in the heinous nature of the crimes, but possibly it’s more about what they do to us as human beings, and to the collective psyche of the society we live in. Whether it’s Ranga-Billa in 1978, Jessica Lall in 1999, Nirbhaya in 2012, they are remembered because these particular cases ruptured something fundamental in our hearts and minds. They destroyed the comforting assumptions on which everyday life rests – the basic idea that we are safe. Our friends and family are safe. Our children are safe. We can protect them. But time and again, when such crimes occur—as depicted in the recent TV series, Raakhinspired by the Ranga-Billa case—it forces society to confront a terrifying reality: that the ordinary world is cruel, uncivilized and horrific.
What is ‘just world belief’, and do we still believe it?
This isn’t a thought that society is ready to live with on a daily basis. It’s deeply unsettling. Psychologists often speak about the human need for what is called a “just world belief”. It is the assumption that good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people and that life follows a broadly understandable moral order. It may seem naive. But most people carry this belief, consciously or unconsciously. Because it allows them to function and go about their daily lives in a cushion of comfort. It enables parents to send children to school, young women to board buses, friends to accept rides from strangers and families to trust that ordinary routines will end in ordinary ways.Crimes that become etched into collective memory are usually those that violently shatter this assumption. They reveal the existence of evil and its terrifying proximity. They tell us that horror can arrive without warning and without logic, in broad daylight, in familiar places, and in circumstances that look entirely ordinary.
Crimes that become etched into collective memory are usually those that violently shatter the assumption that real life is safe. They reveal the existence of evil and its terrifying proximity (File
This is why the Ranga-Billa case continues to occupy such a powerful place in India’s collective consciousness nearly half a century later. In August 1978, Geeta and Sanjay Chopra, siblings from a middle-class family in Delhi, accepted a lift while travelling to a radio station. It was the sort of everyday decision millions of people made at that time. The city was smaller, slower and, at least in memory, more trusting. Children moved about independently. Parents worried, but not with the relentless anxiety that characterizes urban life today. What followed—the kidnapping, assault and murder of the teenagers by Kuljeet Singh, known as Ranga, and Jasbir Singh, known as Billa—was so savage that it instantly transcended the category of crime news. It became a national trauma.
If it happened to them, it could happen to anyone.
The details of the crime horrified the public, but the deeper shock came from the realization that two ordinary children could disappear on an ordinary day from a bus station. In a single moment, the boundaries of parental fear expanded. The phrase “don’t talk to strangers” acquired a new meaning. The caution against accepting lifts became a cultural commandment. Long after many people forgot the specifics of the investigation, they remembered the lesson.Sociologists have long argued that societies are held together by invisible agreements about risk. Every day we trust strangers more than we realize. We trust the bus driver not to crash the vehicle. We trust neighbours not to harm our children. We trust public spaces to remain reasonably safe. Crimes that become permanently lodged in public memory are often those that attack these assumptions. The victims are not perceived as reckless or exceptionally vulnerable. They are perceived as us. Their fate, therefore, feels transferable. If it happened to them, it could happen to anyone.The same mechanism explains why the 1995 Tandoor murder case became one of India’s defining crime stories. The murder itself was shocking: a political worker killed his wife, then attempted to dispose of her body in a restaurant tandoor. But what truly disturbed the public was the collision between intimacy and brutality. Human beings are psychologically prepared to fear violence from strangers, but less prepared to confront crimes involving betrayal by spouses, partners or family members. They leave deeper psychological scars because they undermine another foundational belief—that home is a sanctuary.The Jessica Lall murder case, which unfolded in 1999, haunted the nation for a different reason. Unlike crimes driven by predatory violence, it became a symbol of something societies all over the world fear but rarely see exposed so blatantly: that power could triumph over justice. Jessica was shot dead at a crowded club after refusing to serve a drink to an entitled man. Witnesses existed. Evidence existed. Yet the initial acquittals showed that truth could be manipulated by wealth, influence and social privilege. The collective outrage that followed was fuelled by the fear that systems meant to protect us may fail to deliver accountability. When justice was eventually secured after sustained media attention and public pressure, the case became a referendum on the relationship between citizens and institutions.The Nithari killings, uncovered in Noida in 2006, entered the national consciousness through sheer horror. The discovery of the remains of missing children near a residential house created a nightmare that seemed almost impossible to comprehend. Yet what made Nithari endure was not only its gruesome nature but what it revealed about social neglect. Many of the victims came from poor families whose repeated pleas had initially failed to attract serious attention. The case exposed uncomfortable questions about class, visibility and whose suffering society chooses to see. In public memory, Nithari became more than a serial murder investigation; it became a symbol of how easily the vulnerable can disappear in plain sight.If Ranga-Billa shattered the innocence of a generation and Nithari exposed the invisibility of the vulnerable, the Nirbhaya case transformed the national conversation around women’s safety and gender violence. The 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a moving bus in Delhi triggered an outpouring of grief and rage unlike anything India had witnessed in decades. The brutality of the assault was horrifying, but brutality alone does not explain why the case became such a defining national trauma. What distinguished the Nirbhaya case was the degree to which ordinary Indians, particularly women, saw themselves in her.She was not in an isolated place. She was not taking an extraordinary risk. She was returning home after watching a film, doing something millions of young Indians did every day. The attack brought focus to an assumption that men don’t even think about, but women fear: that public spaces belonged equally to women.More than a decade later, her story remains etched into public memory because it represented a collective realization that economic progress, urbanization and modern aspirations meant little if half the population still had to navigate public life in fear. Few crimes have so dramatically altered both public discourse and personal behaviour.
What is collective effervescence?
French sociologist Émile Durkheim had argued somewhere around the turn of the 20th century that moments of collective shock reveal the moral boundaries of a society. Crimes that become permanently memorable are often those that violate not just legal norms but deeply held moral expectations. They provoke what sociologists call “collective effervescence” – a shared emotional reaction that binds people together through outrage and grief. In these moments, the crime ceases to belong solely to the victim’s family. It becomes a social event, a national wound. The public discussion surrounding such crimes is about identity. What kind of society are we? What values do we claim to uphold? What failures allowed this to happen?
Critics often dismiss public interest in crime stories as morbid curiosity, but psychology suggests something more complex is at work. (Scene from Indian Predator: The Butcher of Delhi)
It’s 2026. We live in a far more violent society than 1978. And all of Durheim’s questions loom larger than ever in our times. Add to the fact that modern media amplifies this process. Earlier generations relied on newspapers, radio reports and word of mouth. Today, television channels, streaming platforms, podcasts and social media create enduring archives of human cruelty and an increasingly apathetic world, where such crimes have become routine.But the media alone also does not explain why certain cases survive while thousands of others fade. Memory is selective. Societies remember stories that symbolize larger anxieties in human beings. Ranga-Billa became shorthand for stranger danger. The Tandoor murder was spousal betrayal. Jessica Lall was all about the battle between power and justice. Nithari brought to focus the cost of societal neglect. And Nirbhaya became shorthand for women’s safety and public outrage. These crimes have evolved into symbols.
What distinguished the Nirbhaya case was the degree to which ordinary Indians, particularly women, saw themselves in her. (A scene from Delhi Crime)
This symbolic power also explains our fascination with true crime. Critics often dismiss public interest in crime stories as morbid curiosity, but psychology suggests something more complex is at work. Human beings are storytelling creatures. We constantly search for patterns that help us navigate danger. Evolution rewarded individuals who paid attention to threats. Stories about predators, whether real or fictional, served as survival tools over centuries.Modern true crime functions in much the same way. People consume these narratives not just to experience fear but to understand it. They want to know how the crime happened, what warning signs were missed, how the perpetrator was caught and whether justice prevailed. In psychological terms, this is sometimes described as an attempt to regain a sense of control over an unpredictable world.
For women, true crime dramas are lessons in threat assessment
For women especially, researchers have observed that true-crime narratives often function as a form of threat assessment. The viewer studies scenarios, identifies risks and mentally rehearses responses. The attraction is not necessarily voyeuristic. It is educational, emotional and defensive.Yet perhaps the deepest reason these crimes never leave us is that they become markers of time. Ask Indians of a certain generation where they were when they first heard about Nirbhaya or Jessica Lall and many will remember. These events have become historical landmarks around which personal memories are organized. They divide life into before and after. Before Ranga-Billa, childhood seemed freer. After Ranga-Billa, caution became a virtue. Before Nirbhaya, discussions around gender violence occupied one place in public discourse. After Nirbhaya, they occupied another.This is what Raakh ultimately reminds us. That the most chilling crimes do not linger because society enjoys revisiting horror. They linger because they permanently alter the way people move through the world. They changed parenting, policing, public conversation, legal frameworks and personal behaviour. Long after the details blur, the emotional truth remains. These crimes are about the loss of innocence, the collapse of trust and the enduring human struggle to make sense of acts that seem to defy comprehension. That is why they still haunt us.
