Authors: Meenal Baghel
Death in Mumbai
RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Published by Random House India in 2011
Copyright © Meenal Baghel 2011
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EPUB ISBN 9788184002751
For my parents, Manjula and Kumar Singh
âEvery journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.'
âJanet Malcolm in
The Journalist and the Murderer
C
ONTENTS
BOOK I: The Journey: From Mysore to Mumbai
BOOK II: OshiwaraâThree Characters in Search of a Film
BOOK III: Death and Dénouement
C
AST
OF
C
HARACTERS
Neeraj Grover
: Television executive from Kanpur who was killed on May 7, 2008 in the apartment of his lover, a Kannada film actress called Maria Susairaj.
Maria Susairaj
: Kannada starlet and aspiring television actress. Neeraj Grover was killed and dismembered in her flat in Malad, a Mumbai suburb. She has since been convicted by a Mumbai civil and sessions court for destruction of evidence, and has appealed for exoneration in a higher court.
Emile Jerome
: Emile was a naval lieutenant, and Maria's boyfriend, when he killed Neeraj Grover in Maria's apartment. He was convicted of culpable homicide not amounting to murder by the same sessions court, and has since appealed against the decision in the Bombay High Court.
Amarnath Grover
: Neeraj Grover's father. He owned a photocopying shop in Kanpur, and now devotes his energies to pursuing justice for his son.
Neelam Grover
: Neeraj's mother.
Nishant Lal
: A television writer-producer, and one of Neeraj's closest friends in Mumbai. He was a key prosecution witness.
Deepak Kumar
: Also works in the television industry. Neeraj's friend and chief troubleshooter in matters of the heart.
Haresh Sondarva
: Neeraj's flatmate, who worked in the apparel industry. Haresh left Mumbai after Neeraj's killing.
Sushant Singh
: Neeraj's flatmate. He came from Chandigarh to Mumbai to make his mark in Bollywood as a music director.
Deepak Singh
: Choreographer and Maria Susairaj's friend. She was his houseguest when she came to Mumbai from Bangalore in April 2008, a few days before Neeraj's death.
Kiran Shreyans
: Dance instructor. Maria was acquainted with Kiran in Bangalore, and borrowed his car to dispose of Neeraj's body parts in the jungles of Manor. He was also a prosecution witness in the trial at the city civil and sessions court.
Pavan
(His name has been altered upon request): Dance instructor and Maria's former boyfriend.
Richard Susairaj
: Maria's brother. Works at their father's construction firm in Bangalore.
Jitesh Saini and Vasanth Kumar
: Naval officers and Emile Jerome's friends and course mates. Vasanth, who was Emile's roommate at the naval base at Kochi, was also a prosecution witness.
Ekta Kapoor
: India's most successful television producer, and an astute observer of social mores. Neeraj had worked at her company Balaji Telefilms, and while he was there he met Maria Susairaj and promised her a role in the Balaji serial
Mahabharat
.
Moon Das
: A television and stage dancer who aspired to work as an item girl in a big-budget Bollywood film. She was approached to play the role of Maria Susairaj in a movie that was eventually abandoned. Her life was indelibly marked by tragedy when an overly possessive boyfriend went on a shooting spree, in which he killed Moon's mother and uncle.
Ram Gopal Varma
: Maverick filmmaker who has directed a film âinspired' by the Neeraj Grover killing, called
Not a Love Story
.
Rakesh Maria
: He was the Joint Commissioner of the Mumbai Crime Branch when Neeraj's father approached him to help trace his son, who seemed to have disappeared overnight. The Crime Branch, along with the local police, finally solved the mystery of Neeraj Grover's death. Rakesh Maria has since moved out of the Crime Branch, and at present heads the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad.
Inspector Satish Raorane
: The chief investigating officer in the case. He is now attached to a police station in Mumbai.
P
REFACE
I
N
THE
SECOND
week of May 2008, the inside pages of the Mumbai newspapers reported the story of a twenty-five-year-old television executive from Kanpur who had gone missing. He was last seen on May 6 at the suburban home of his lover, a little-known Kannada film actress named Maria Monica Susairaj.
The story moved to the front page two weeks later, when Rakesh Maria, the savvy boss of the Mumbai Crime Branch, held a press conference in which he announced that the missing television executive, Neeraj Grover, was dead. It was, the officer enunciated with customary deliberation, allowing the scribes to take down each word, the case of a love triangle gone horribly wrong. Neeraj Grover, he alleged, had been killed by Maria Susairaj, aged twenty-eight, and her naval officer fiancé Lieutenant Emile Jerome, aged twenty-five. After killing Neeraj the couple had cut his body up into âseveral bits', and disposed of it in the jungles of Manor, a picnic spot on the outskirts of Mumbai.
The story could not have been more dramatic had it been scripted. It had all the key ingredients for a media
frenzyâyoung, beautiful, ambitious people involved in a gruesome killing. It became the year's biggest crime story, with each emerging detail lapped up by an avid audience. The press outdid each other with wild speculations. When one young reporter at a leading television channel called up his bosses in Delhi to alert them to the news, they didn't ask him about the who, what, when, where, why, and howâthose classic cornerstones of reportingâbut a more Gabbar-like question: âKitne tukde the?' (How many pieces were there?)
When the reporter, quoting Rakesh Maria, responded with âseveral bits', the television bosses added three and three and came up with three hundred. âIf a chicken can be cut into ten, twelve pieces, it follows that a five foot eleven inch man would be cut into three hundred pieces,' they insisted before running the headline.
The effect of this revelation was sensational. The killing suddenly seemed more vivid; the criminals more monstrous. Neeraj had not simply been killed. He had been hacked into three hundred pieces. As Neeraj's distraught mother Neelam Grover said when I first spoke to her on the phone: âJust see how they cut up my son, that's not the work of ordinary folks but evil sorcerers.' They were âchudail, pishach', she said, ânot human beings'.
Killing is rarely a sophisticated act. It arises out of too many unbridled passionsâanger, greed, jealousy, lust. Here were three people blessed with many favours through their
livesâthey were young, educated, each talented in their own way, beautiful, and from comfortable middle class backgrounds. What dark undercurrents in their personalities drew them to one another? What really transpired through the night of May 6 and 7 that led them to lose control, and erase the possibilities that life offered?
Several comparisons have been drawn between this case and the famous Nanavati murder case of 1959, in which a naval officer, Kawas Nanavati, killed his English wife's lover, a wealthy Mumbai businessman called Prem Ahuja. Nanavati, having learnt of his wife's infidelity, confronted Ahuja about the affair as he lay in his bathtub, eliciting the response, âAm I supposed to marry every woman I sleep with?'
Similarly, Lieutenant Emile Jerome rushed from Kochi to Mumbai when he found out that Neeraj Grover was at his girlfriend's house late on the night of May 6. He arrived at Maria's door early in the morning, and went straight into her bedroom to verify his suspicions. Neeraj Grover, allegedly lying in a state of dishabille, opened his eyes and looked at Emile, then at Maria: âOh, so this is the fiancé?' he remarked.
Grover's and Ahuja's impulse to provoke may have been the same, but what followed is what separates the two cases entirely. After shooting Ahuja dead, a repentant Nanavati immediately went to the police and surrendered. Emile and Maria allegedly dismembered Neeraj's body for quick disposal, and for two weeks thereafter behaved as if nothing was amiss. They exhibited none of the remorse that follows a temporary loss of controlâthe
guilt which lent a certain nobility to Dostoevsky's murderer Raskolnikov.
