Indrani-Sheena Saga Holds a Mirror to the Problem of Child Abuse

If theories of Indrani’s child abuse are true, it is time to analyse the violence we raise children with.

• The motive stitched together in the Sheena Bora murder case so far is property, money and power.
• Threat can drive us to be mean, suspicious, petty, manipulating, angry, resentful, jealous, malicious and even murderous.
• Personality and barriers are in turn shaped and defined by something even more lasting and potent – early childhood.
• If stories of threat perception and child abuse are true, it is necessary to dwell upon a mind gone awry, and the dark and dreadful imprints on the psyche of one such.

Indrani Mukerjea, 43, is accused of allegedly plotting and executing the murder of her daughter, Sheena Bora, who went missing in 2012. The police say they have evidence that proves Ms Mukerjea had attempted to kill Sheena’s brother Mikhail as well. These are children from an affair Ms Mukerjea had when she was 16. She introduced them to others as her siblings.

The motive stitched together so far is property, money and power. With Sheena and Mikhail gone, Ms Mukerjea’s property in her home state would’ve gone to her legitimate daughter Vidhie from an earlier marriage to Sanjeev Khanna. This might explain Khanna’s motive for allegedly aiding in the murder. He is a co-accused.

Money and Power

Ms Mukerjea has seen a fair amount of money and power. As wife of Peter Mukerjea, considered among the most successful top media executives from the late 1990s till 2009, when he retired, Ms Mukerjea was a partner in her husband’s social and professional affluence. The couple lived at residences in Mumbai, Spain and the UK.

Speculation and circumstantial evidence by the police on the case suggests that her daughter telling on her past threatened Ms Mukerjea’s grip on the “good life”. Also, Sheena’s relationship with Peter’s son Rahul, from an earlier marriage, threatened Indrani’s claim over the Mukerjea assets. So the lady broke boundaries of family and motherhood to have her daughter murdered.

Threat

Of import are two words. The first is threat. Threat is a primal fear. We are all hardwired to fight-or-flee when we are threatened. We experience it when faced by a creature we fear – a tiger, a snake, a lizard, or cockroach, depending on what you fear personally. We also feel it when faced by an adversary.

It is the same emotion that a doting mother experiences towards her son’s newly wedded wife; that an instructor experiences towards a protégé with more talent; that a sibling experiences when another claims a parent’s attention; that a man feels when the prospects of youth and vitality from children or relatives threaten his hold over business and family. The threat is of irrelevance – that we will cease to matter.

We are all potential victims and/or perpetrators of the mechanism of threat.

Barriers

Threat can drive us to be mean, suspicious, petty, manipulating, angry, resentful, jealous, malicious and even murderous.

What distinguishes our individual reaction, as well as the intensity we feel to threat and greed, lies in the barriers we learn to respect – what will we do, or not do, to indulge or overcome the grasp of a powerful and dark emotion.

Herein lies the second point of note – that Ms Mukerjea broke a barrier, no less than that of motherhood, to secure her position in society and life. It continues to grab eyeballs on screen – this story where a mother might have brutally murdered her daughter, dumped the body and remained unaffected to impersonate her on social media for a year thereafter. What kind of a person would that be?

Imprints

But personality and barriers are in turn shaped and defined by something even more lasting and potent – early childhood. For the trove of information dug out on Ms Mukerjea’s past affairs, children (legitimate and not) and business interests, one is told of a childhood where an only child was apparently often physically and emotionally abused, whipped by a belt, by her father and frequently locked up alone at home.

If that is true, then an overwhelming feeling of injustice – one where no barriers need be respected, may well have shaped Ms Mukerjea in her early years.

This is not to condone murder, if indeed Ms Mukerjea is guilty of it. It is to dwell upon a mind gone awry, and the dark and dreadful imprints on the psyche of one such.

In which case then, what would matter to us, more than the ultimate verdict of the case, is an affair closer and more immediate to each home – how much violence, direct or subtle, real or virtual, or the absence of it, we raise our children with.

(Vandana Kohli is a filmmaker and writer. She is currently writing a book on mental health)