Filmmaker Mayurica Biswas’s latest documentary, titled A Big Little Murder, opens up to a nondescript birthday celebration. It’s a bunch of eager children sitting around a birthday cake, all ready to blow out the ceremonial candles as they break into the customary Happy Birthday song.
But then, one kid asks in Hindi, “Mujhe to pata bhi nahi kiska birthday hai” (I don’t even know whose birthday it is). As the absence of the birthday boy looms large, the screen pans upwards to his picture. Written below the picture is a name that most haven’t forgotten. The name is of a seven-year-old boy who was found dead at a Gurugram school in September 2017.
Detailing the sequence of the events leading up to and after the seven-year-old’s killing, the incisive film, co-directed by filmmaker Pracheta Sharma, talks about the ‘murder’ of a ‘little’ boy, while raising a ‘big’ set of questions.
For the first time, the two-part film also brings to camera the parents and friends of the 17-year-old student accused of slashing the child’s throat in the school bathroom, resulting in his death. According to reports, the juvenile, a student of Class 11, had killed the seven-year-old in a bid to ‘delay a parent-teacher meeting and examinations’.
Apart from gripping visuals of the crime scene, the most shocking part of Biswas’s film is how the accused juvenile had reportedly spoken about his dangerous plans to delay the parent-teacher meeting to his friends.
According to a friend, the juvenile accused had allegedly mixed poison in a female classmate’s water bottle to delay the parent-teacher meeting. This was confirmed by another student, whose identity has not been revealed.
“About three weeks before the murder, he and I were sitting in the class. He said to me, ‘Dude, parent-teacher meeting is coming up. I have to get it cancelled anyhow. Else, my parents would beat me up’. He said, ‘How about I blow up the school?’. A few days later, he said, ‘Look, I’ve got poison with me’. He said, ‘I will kill someone with this’. After a few slots, he came back and said, ‘Dude, I have mixed poison in the girl’s bottle’.”Juvenile Accused’s Friend
If this incident is true, it raises a glaring set of questions:
- Why did the accused juvenile’s friend not report this to the teachers? Was this a normal affair to him?
- Did the girl whose water bottle was allegedly poisoned not speak about the incident to her parents or teachers?
- Were the authorities of the Gurugram school never made aware of the juvenile’s alleged activities?
By focusing on the psychological condition of the juvenile accused and those around him, Biswas’s film has once again reopened the debate on the mental health of children in schools.
According to reports, the CBI says the accused juvenile had confessed to killing the seven-year-old to push back a parent-teacher meeting and to avoid appearing for general examinations. If that is the case, was he such under immense pressure from his parents that he felt he had to commit such a gruesome crime?
The film reveals the exact nature of the child’s fatal injuries. The gashes were deep and could have only been executed with an intent to kill. Was the juvenile, accused of committing the murder, so disturbed that he didn’t think twice before slitting a kid’s throat?
While the documentary suggests that the juvenile accused could have been suffering from a form of depression, his parents have clearly denied any such a possibility. Arguing that their son is innocent, the juvenile’s father has raised a few questions, for instance, the absence of bloodstains on his son’s shirt.
The juvenile’s mother feels her son could not have been depressed because he kept on playing his keyboard. “If he was really depressed, how could he have continued playing the keyboard?” she asks in the film.
If the CCTV footage is to be believed, the time span in which the juvenile accused allegedly killed the seven-year-old could not have exceeded five minutes, which implies that he had to be precise in his act. Now that triggers the question, where and how did he learn about how to commit such an act, without leaving a trail?
Mayurica Biswas asks, “Is this the tip of an iceberg that foreshadows a disturbing truth about young minds? Does it expose a systemic failure of every institution in the Indian society that is meant to nurture and safeguard the physical and emotional well-being of our children?”
She adds that the film goes beyond the question of the ‘Who?’ and delves deeper into the ‘Why?’
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)