New Delhi, July 09: The Indian judicial system seems to have let down the national ethos one more time. There are several parallels — Jessica Lall, Priyadarshini Mattoo, and now Neeraj Grover. The public opinion jury is still out on the case since the grass roots mobilization efforts have just commenced. The facts leading up to the murder may be fuzzy. However, the outcome is not. This may well be the penultimate wake up call for judicial reform awaited by many in the nation.
Neeraj Grover Case Tops News from India
Neeraj Grover, a young producer working with a private television company in Mumbai, was brutally murdered in a flat in Malad west, Mumbai, on May 7th 2008. His severed body was allegedly chopped into 300 pieces and mercilessly discarded in the Manor forest near Thane by Maria Susairaj, a want-to-be Kannada starlet and her fiancée Emile Jerome, a lieutenant with the Indian Navy. On 30th June 2011, Maria was set free as the maximum sentence slated for the offence against her was a three-year imprisonment, which she had already served during the trial period.
Amarnath and Neelam Grover, Neeraj’s parents, are shocked to find Susairaj“walking out of jail in her makeup”. The murder was pre-planned according to them. It is all about representation and interpretation. Their son has been plotted against, and Susairaj is the culprit, the parents and many others believe strongly.
Public Outcry in the Neeraj Grover Case
A campaign to send one hundred thousand letters to the president for”delivering justice”to the Grover family has been launched in Kanpur, the hometown of Neeraj Grover.”Be it doctors, engineers, students or housewives – people from all walks of life are extending support to the campaign,”said Gyanesh Mishra, an activist in the mushrooming movement to enforce justice. The primary motive of the grass roots campaign is to re-open the case and to ensure the rightful prosecution of Maria Susairaj, who was convicted for destruction of evidence in the case in the sessions court. Maria Susairaj had ventured into Mumbai to try her luck in the world of Bollywood films. To fulfill her dreams, she befriended Neeraj Grover. They were spotted together several times by family and the media. Emile Jerome perhaps suspected Maria of betrayal and decided to fly to Mumbai the same night from his naval base in Cochin, Kerala. He fond Neeraj in a compromising state in his girlfriend’s apartment in Dheeraj Solitaire building. He stabbed the victim in a fit of rage. He also allegedly raped Maria twice, once in front of the corpse and then in the bathroom. All the while, the co-accused was kept at gun point, as she has stated in her signed confession.
Several questions continue to remain unanswered and various links appear missing, according to sources close to the investigation. The court convicted Jerome under section 304 (Part I) for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Maria was convicted under section 201 of the Indian Penal Code for destruction of evidence.
Conflicting Version from Maria Susairaj
Surprisingly, neither Jerome nor Maria was held guilty of murder (under section 302 of IPC). The prosecution failed to prove two most important strands of this case– purpose behind the murder, and the time of the murder. Forensic evidence was overlooked. There was not a single expert opinion presented before the court.“All the while, Emile was threatening me not to tell anything to the police otherwise he would kill me and also kill himself. I say that Emile killed Neeraj in front of me”, though prosecution didn’t rely upon Maria’s confession, they were unable to complete the chain of circumstantial evidence. Maria has changed her stance several times. They also failed to prove the charge of conspiracy against Jerome and Maria. While Maria claims innocence and asserts that she has found God, Neeraj’s parents wait for vindication. The truth is yet to be exposed.