The murder of Sheena Bora makes you admire Hobbes for his perceptive observation of human beings as nasty, brutish and animalistic. Indrani Mukerjea is one illustration of his cynical belief. Her dalliance with this heinous crime mirrors our infallible lust for power, sex and money.
Look at the rogues’ gallery closely. You will notice there a justice, an environmentalist, a journalist of enormous repute, an erudite politician, a social activist, all craving for fresh female faces and their physical attributes. Then you have a politician who latently longs for the body of a South Indian woman before an equally insensitive audience and another who relishes fondling the idea of ‘rape’.
This craving for chasing skirts is also rampant in Defence Forces and the civil services where officers prefer turning a blind eye to the seniors’ overtures to their wives to protect and groom their careers. Same is true in the corporate and media sectors where you move up not necessarily by the dint of seniority or merit but by ignoring indiscretions of senior executives. The couch stories in the movie world are, of course, very common. While a few brave girls have fought to protect their honour, Indrani used the prevailing permissiveness to the hilt to acquire wealth and fame.
The High and Mighty
Actually, Indrani was doing nothing out of the ordinary. She only used her charm to make her feel wanted by power brokers whom you find in plenty in high society circles. That she could prosper out-of-turn despite being an unwed mother with two kids and coming from a humble, poor background and from a relatively less visible corner of India, is indeed creditable.
With age catching up, she had to run fast against time. Consummated by ambition to float among the rich and mighty and blinded by hunger for more she had to give a new identity to her daughter and if that did not work, then try to erase her in the most gruesome manner.
In doing so she perhaps went a bit too far. She forgot the laws of nature which eventually seem to be settling score with her. Her exact motive and the manner in which she allegedly kill her daughter should hopefully come out in the investigation, though grave doubt persists on that score.
In rural India and in slum areas in cities, Indrani’s alleged murder of her daughter, maintaining parallel relationship with past and present husbands, using a willing former husband to conspire and dispose off her daughter’s body etc, will ring a common bell. It happens most of the time but seldom gets noticed. However, it invariably ends in conviction.
One cannot say with any conviction that it will end in the same manner for Indrani. Since she is a socialite and wife of a media czar, the legal aspect of her daughter’s murder has become a matter of intense scrutiny and debate in print and electronic media. Befitting her status, the investigation is being directly supervised by the Mumbai chief himself.
One doesn’t precisely know what motivated him to take extraordinary interest in a simple case of murder, setting aside his more important responsibilities. It could well be that he was afraid that his juniors might handle the conspirators and the accused harshly, attracting adverse comments from human rights activists, Peter’s elitist friends and the courts.
One hopes he will show similar concern to other murderers and rapists and spare them of coercive interrogation by ‘barbaric’ junior investigative officers. But he must also be prepared for the flip side of his overactive role. If the case falls through in the end because of disjointed collection and poor assimilation of evidence, motive of paying back will surely be attributed to him.
The Legality
Our bane is that some of us are more equal than others before the law. A few audacious judges have tried to correct the discrimination in our legal system by punishing the high and mighty but have been quickly silenced by higher courts. Look at the way paroles are dispensed and bails granted. You almost feel that it is a sin to commit a crime without being a privileged person.
Indrani Mukerjea was supremely confident of her acquired pedigree which explains why she went about murdering Sheena Bora and covering her tracks so casually. How else can you explain the driver’s removal from service or Sanjeev Khanna’s booking in a well-known Mumbai hotel or sending messages and letters on behalf of her daughter.
It is comical the way the characters in this gruesome murder are behaving. The unwed husband, Siddhartha Das, remains incognito for 12 years in Calcutta, not bothered how his illegitimate son and daughter are doing. Khanna is lured to go to Mumbai and ‘innocently’ made a reluctant accomplice in a murder. He is a poor guy, very sweet and incapable of being a devil, so his friends would like us to believe. Rahul shows no interest in knowing about the sudden disappearance of Sheena for over two years.
Wearing the mask of an innocent man, Peter Mukerjea maintains that he knew Sheena as Indrani’s sister all along and complains of betrayal by his wife for keeping him in the dark of her lies and devious plans. Each of these pretentious posturing rings hollow. How much of their act is fake can only be explained by the chargesheet. The battery of defence lawyers, some of them celebrated, are eagerly waiting for chinks to emerge in the circumstantial evidence presented before the court and seize upon them to take the wind out of the sail of this case.
One more aspect of this crime calls for introspection. Apart from the police, the TV news channels have been carrying out parallel investigation, questioning suspects and following the investigating officers on the trail of suspects and the crime scene. The police chief, for reasons best known to him, also briefs media regularly on the course of the investigation. Both are helping the accused and the suspects to preempt the likely question and then plan their defence.
The critical element in any inquiry is how often the IO can surprise the accused and take him off guard. If the IO’s moves are known before hand, the defence can suitably brief the clients what to say and when to clamp up. In days gone by, the nature of evidence was known only when the case was chargesheeted. That gave ample time and space to IOs to thoroughly build a case after connecting all the dots.
The situation here is vastly different. With even investigators turning into sources for the media, it is difficult to imagine how the case can be fairly and properly investigated. The electronic media needs to stop their ill-informed inquisition and leave the professionals to do their job. By floating theories and speculating, they are forcing the police to either pad up the evidence or waste time by chasing windmill. A murder is a murder and does not deserve full throated debates and analysis and certainly not a town hall trial.
(The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat)
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