The Grover murder verdict: the lynching of Maria Susairaj

“Maria Walks Free,” proclaim the newspaper stories and TV headlines in the Neeraj Grover case. Today’s verdict — awarding three years to Maria Susairaj and ten to Emile Jerome — has the media frothing at the mouth. And there’s no doubt as to where their sympathies lie. The wall-to-wall coverage is being driven almost entirely by the victim’s family. The camera lingers close on the face of the weeping mother, and the running ticker plays up Amarnath Grover’s most incendiary quotes: “This is not sentencing. This is acquittal”; “Without Maria’s help, Jerome could not have done it”; “Maria responsible for killing”. The overarching message: the real criminal is not Emile Jerome who killed Grover and hacked his body into 300-odd pieces, but the woman found guilty of aiding and abetting the cover-up. [caption id=“attachment_35099” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A grieving father is entitled to his consolations, but not a news organisation. PTI”]  [/caption] As nearly all legal experts agree, the prosecutors did not offer any evidence of either conspiracy or premeditation. But that hasn’t stopped Amarnath Grover of describing Maria as the “prime accused” who duped her fiance into committing this appalling crime: “We want phansi ki sazaa (death sentence) for the killers, Maria Susairaj and Emile Jerome. I can’t get my son back. Justice is an eye for an eye.” His evidence for Susairaj’s culpability is telling: “Yeh achchi ladki nahin hai. Pehle to raat ko bulaya. Acchi ladkiyan yeh nahin karti.” (She is not a good girl. First she called him to her house at night. This is not something good girls do.) And why did Neeraj Grover accept her invitation? “Aise koyi baat kahi ke Neeraj chala gaya.” (She must have said something persuasive that Neeraj went over). A grieving father is entitled to his consolations, but not a news organisation like, say, Times Now, which seems to have taken up the Jezebel narrative with a vengeance. Describing Susairaj as “Lady Macbeth”,  an article on the channel’s website claims “the wilful, manipulative actress has gone an extreme length to feed her ambition even if it means putting her jilted lover in the dock and moreover taking the life of an innocent.” This moral lynching is all the more inexplicable when we take a closer look at Susairaj’s actions. Here’s a woman who – contrary to her protestations – was having an affair with a producer, perhaps to promote her career. Does this make her evil? If a trip to the ‘casting couch’ is a sign of immoral character, many movie stars and models around the world would qualify. Given the weak proof of conspiracy, it is likely the murder went down just as she confessed: Jerome discovered the lovers and killed Grover in a jealous rage. Now what would a girl – good or bad – do in that situation? Is it so difficult to believe that she would fear for her life? No she didn’t go running to the police. Perhaps she believed — as many of us might — that the authorities will be unwilling to offer protection, and just as likely to accuse her of the crime. This may not be true — none of us know much either about Susairaj’s state of mind or the exact circumstances of the crime. But it is hardly improbable or unthinkable. And it is certainly every bit as possible as the unsubstantiated theory put forward by Amarnath Grover. Why then is the media so quick to accept one hypothesis over the other? Putting competing theories aside, what has the legal community perplexed is not Susairaj’s punishment but the sentence awarded to Jerome. She has received the maximum sentence for the crime proved in court — i.e. three years of rigorous imprisonment for lying to cover up a murder. Jerome, on the other hand, has got off lightly for killing a man, hacking him into pieces, and setting the remains on fire. Yet all the headlines are about Maria walking free. This is a gruesome act of violence by any stretch of the imagination. And given the callous, calculated manner in which the body was disposed, it can hardly be described as a moment of temporary insanity. Yet that is the justification offered by judge N W Chandwani: “When he entered the room, he was calm. This showed he did not have intention (to murder). Obviously for a fiancé, in a situation where he finds a stranger with his partner, would upset a prudent man and he would lose control.” His actions would presumably be just as ‘understandable’ – or perhaps more so – if this “prudent man” had killed Susairaj as well. So let’s get this straight. A man can be partly forgiven for committing a brutal murder because – poor thing – his fiancé was cheating on him. But a woman will be lynched for solely lying to cover up the crime because she isn’t an “achchi ladki.” Arre wah!