‘Susairaj Is A Tragic Figure’

ew crimes have captured the national imagination quite as compellingly as the murder of 25-year-old Neeraj Grover in May 2008. Mumbai police say that the TV executive was lying naked in 27-year-old Kannada starlet Maria Susairaj’s bedroom when her fiance, Emile Jerome Matthew, walked in and stabbed Grover to death. Maria and Emile are then said to have hacked the corpse into approximately 300 pieces before putting the chopped limbs on fire.

This outline makes the case sound like fodder for a Ram Gopal Verma potboiler, but it lends itself to a Capoteesque retelling, especially in the hands of Mumbai Mirror editor Meenal Baghel, who is writing a book on the case called Death in Mumbai. After seeing pictures of Neeraj’s parents breaking down after coming face to face with the alleged killers, Baghel says she wanted to answer not just the obvious question—“Why was Neeraj killed?”—but more complex ones, such as, “What drove two young, urban, seemingly well-adjusted people, who had their lives ahead of them, to such extremes?”

Although stories of brutal crime are commonplace for the tabloid editor, “the calmness with which Maria and Emile had conducted themselves afterwards” left her startled. She interviewed many persons known to the accused—colleagues, lawyers, bosses, former lovers, friends—who “drew a different picture of them from their families”. Maria, in particular, began to emerge as, in Baghel’s words, “wilful, ambitious, sexually manipulative, and ultimately a figure of tragedy”.

L’affaire Neeraj, Baghel feels, is representative of a dangerous relationship that now links youth to a new wave of crime. She says, “The value attached to money and fame, and the sense of entitlement many of the young feel without necessarily the talent, all this together becomes a lethal combination.”

Maria Susairaj still continues to make headlines. In May this year, TV audiences were shocked to hear she had undergone treatment for her acne. Maria’s continuing ability to make news is perhaps best explained by the fact that murder of Neeraj has proved an apt reflection of changing morals in fast-changing times. As Baghel concludes, “We are increasingly living in a let-it-all-hang-out culture...even violence is a form of exhibitionism.”