There have been other shameful instances in recent years of witness intimidation, tampering with evidence and wrongful acquittal, but where was the middle-class outrage then? The judge who acquitted the son of a senior police officer for the rape and murder of law student Priyadarshini Mattoo made what should have been a shocking statement: that he knew the accused was guilty. The public reacted with cynical resignation: what could one expect of the police but that they would protect their own? Then there was Sanjeev Nanda, mowing down pavement dwellers in his bmw, and widely believed to have bought off witnesses and the families of the victims—all poor people. When Page 3 recorded his reappearance at glittering social events and polo matches by blithely describing him as "Sanjeev Nanda of BMW fame", his rehabilitation in society seemed complete.
When Zahira Sheikh, clearly terrorised by a well-oiled and ruthless political machine, changed her testimony in the Best Bakery case, in which nine of her family were burnt to death, media and civil society were exercised, but the larger public—anyway polarised along communal lines—did not rally to her support. People were quick to discredit Zahira as a girl of no consequence, and a Muslim at that, who would say whatever you wanted her to say, depending on how much you paid her.
And recently, there has been the murder of Nitish Katara, allegedly by Vikas Yadav, a main accused in the Jessica case, reportedly because he objected to Nitish’s friendship with his sister. Here too, with the case under trial, there have been attempts to subvert evidence and threaten witnesses. But his mother has been fighting a lone battle.
So what is it about the Jessica case that has finally breached the threshold of cynical "hota hai" acceptance of wrongdoing in high places, and triggered this release of pent-up middle-class anger? Several factors set this case apart from the others. First, all the favourite targets of middle-class rage star in this drama—corrupt and brutal police, crooked politicians and their thuggish offspring, the rotten rich and well-connected who buy their way out of trouble with arrogant confidence, the dissolute P3P who lack all sense of morality. Second, there were plenty of witnesses to the crime—educated, affluent people, secure in society, people who were expected to have the courage to stand up in court and say what they saw and knew. But in the end, they counted for nothing. Third, there was the absolute lack of motive—Jessica was "offed" as though she were an annoying insect whose life counted for nothing.
The social undercurrents of this case have also gripped the public imagination. There seems to have been in the attitude of her killer a typical contempt for the type of woman Jessica was—visibly westernised, and comfortable in an ambience where people are drinking. It is an attitude fed by stereotypes in countless Bollywood films, with their images of ‘bad girls’ and vamps, always in western dress, often Anglo-Indian or Christian, hanging around drinking dens and nightclubs, a disgrace to Indian womanhood. One wonders if Manu Sharma would so unthinkingly have killed a man who had refused him a drink. Or a demure woman in a sari.
Perhaps, too, he perceived Jessica’s refusal to serve him a drink as an insult to his social aspirations—the aspirations of a small-town boy who, for all his money and political clout, could not gain acceptance into the hip-and-happening PLU crowd that was part of the Ramanis’ inner circle at Tamarind Court. Maybe, with that bullet through Jessica’s head, he was also avenging his exclusion.
But what has also clearly moved the middle class are the images brought to them by the media of Jessica’s family. Looking stoic but stricken, so clearly beaten by a seven-year-long ordeal, their faces will haunt us for a long time to come.
The flood of popular indignation shows no signs of drying up, and perhaps, one day, it will result in better witness protection laws, speedier trials, procedures to prevent tampering with evidence, a clean-up of the police, an overhaul of the criminal justice system. But until then, how about naming, shaming and shunning Jessica’s murderer, his accomplices, and all those who colluded in the cover-up? To start with, boycott Manu Sharma’s Blue Ice discotheque, and his father’s businesses and hotels; badger the Congress and the BSP to expel Venod Sharma and D.P. Yadav, and bar them for life from contesting elections. And rally around Neelam Katara as she fights to prevent another brazen mockery of justice in her son’s murder trial.
