Death in Mumbai

by Meenal Baghel

  Of all his friends and family only Haresh Sondarva, his other flatmate, picked on the strains of Neeraj’s fixation with women. ‘His obsession with girls was a sickness. He never wanted to be alone, and he couldn’t bear to be without a girl for long. If we were a group of guys watching a film or just hanging out, Neeraj would be there with us but he’d get bored after a while and call a woman friend over.’

  The fashion designer, twenty-nine, who shared, and just as often not, the room with Neeraj, says he never asked him why he brought so many women home. ‘Somebody had to adjust, and it was always me.’ But he did get a good sense of Neeraj’s problem. ‘Once he took Ecstasy after which he told me that the drug’s impact lasted on him for two or three days. For the first time, he said to me, I feel relaxed and I am not constantly thinking of women, it’s such a relief.’

  After Neeraj’s death, Haresh along with Neeraj’s cousin conducted a small shanti path for him. They packed some of his belongings and brought them to the Versova beach where, amidst the waves dissolving by their feet, producing that strangely intimate sound, they immersed Neeraj’s belongings, and offered a prayer to the retreating sun. Neeraj’s cousin told Haresh, ‘We had come to Mumbai with such hopes but what have we ended with?’

  Shattered by the tragedy the small group has since disintegrated. Neeraj’s cousin has moved to Delhi, the woman Neeraj introduced to his parents as the one he wanted to marry has gone back to her hometown unable to deal with either Neeraj’s betrayal with Maria or his killing, and Haresh himself is looking to leave. ‘This city is so inhumane. Have you tried boarding the local train? You may—if you struggle long enough—get somewhere here, but you lose a lot in the bargain. There’s no breathing space. It affects your mental health,’ he said intensely, still deeply affected by the events.

  ‘After Neeraj’s death I came to realize the unethical things that go on in the name of so-called modernity. I have begun to question all that.’ Several months later when I called Haresh to check a quote he told me he had relocated to Pune and was the happier for it.

  Shaken by the tragedy, one of Neeraj’s women friends too offered a public forgiveness, writing on his wall: ‘I didn’t know the last time I saw you would be The Last Time I’d ever get to see you… I pray and hope that your mom and dad gather the strength required to sail through this fierce storm. All this is still so unbelievable. Violence to this extreme? I don’t understand how their [criminals’] conscience would have allowed them to lie and live even if they’d never been caught. May you be blessed with Moksha. You weren’t a bad man, Neeraj, you didn’t deserve this. Not an early death, and not a disgraceful end.’

  Even though there was some laughter, thanks to their grandchildren, it would take a long time for peace and happiness to find a place in the Kanpur home of the Grovers. It was a full house the day I visited. Shikha was there with her two children and husband. Neelam Grover’s brother Satnam Arora, the family’s steadiest support in those dark days when Neeraj was missing, was present with his wife and teenaged daughter, as was Amarnath Grover’s sister-in-law, whose son had lived with Neeraj in Mumbai.

  There was plenty of chatter, the scraping of spoon against plate, and the gurgle of young children being tickled by their Naanu. But the skein of grief ran thick.

  Amarnath Grover moved around the house a diminished man, shorn of the light of life. There’s an untranslatable word in Hindi for it, shree-heen. His wife’s eyes tailed him anxiously. ‘He’s so distracted, forgetful,’ she complained to her sisters-in-law as he moved out of earshot. ‘He goes to get dahi, will pay for it but forget the packet. He’ll see a boy of Ginni’s age on the road and start to cry. I have forbidden him from driving the scooter because his eyes well up. Then he can’t see and may have an accident.’ The family has now hired a driver for the white Santro they had bought for Neeraj after he passed out of school.

  ‘For twenty years he never missed opening the shutters of the shop at 8.30 am sharp,’ Neelam Grover turned around to tell me. ‘But now, he just doesn’t want to leave the house, or he’ll go really late. Some boys are running it indifferently. When I chide him he finds excuses and then says, who should I go for now? What is the point?’ Her face crumpled as she spoke.

  Later when he and I were out of the house, Amarnath Grover said he’d stopped going to the shop because he didn’t want to leave Neelam all by herself in the house. ‘God knows what all she will keep thinking. As it is she has lost so much weight, become half of her size.’

  It was here, in this simple home, in this unremarkable town, where the high-decibel big-city case distilled into the purest tragedy for an ageing man and his wife.

  But it was more than the loss of a beautiful, vibrant son; it was the promise of his future cut short that had broken the Grovers. To use a phrase from Kafka in an altogether different context, Neeraj’s death had hit Amarnath Grover like an ice-axe that broke the frozen sea inside his soul. This is what psychotherapists call the onset of awareness. As the shards disintegrated and collapsed, so did his notions about his perfect son. On more than one occasion through that day he had asked if I had, during my interviews for this book, learnt anything adverse about Neeraj.

  On one occasion, an aunt interjected, sailing into hyperbole. ‘What’s there to ask? Itna seedha bachcha tha, working hard all the time [He was such a simple child]. Kabhi naa smoke naa drink [Never smoked or drank]. In our family toh bachche call and complain [In our family, kids call and complain], how come you never taught us any wiles, how are we to deal with this world?’

  But Amarnath Grover continued to look searchingly, expectantly, as if he already knew something and now only needed corroboration. What could I tell the grieving father? ‘Nothing unusual, except for the women,’ I offered weakly. ‘Oh, that we know about!’ Shikha and the cousin let out a gust of relief. ‘He was so good-looking and the TV industry is full of girls.’

  ‘Especially in production, there are no handsome boys,’ Amarnath Grover spoke up slowly. ‘You know, while he was still studying in Kanpur,’ he said, ‘Ginni had a friend and one day he brought her to the shop. This girl, well, she came in wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt, her hair was shorter than mine. I told Neeraj, do you think someone like her can really take care of you? Believe me; from the next day on he stopped meeting her. That way he was very obedient. He wanted to marry a homely girl.’

  ‘It’s our misfortune that he got entangled with that chudail.’ Neelam Grover was sobbing inconsolably now. ‘The way they cut up his body, we didn’t even get anything to perform last rites to. That’s not like the behaviour of human beings, is it?’

  ‘These girls…’ Amarnath Grover clamped up abruptly. ‘Beta, what’s your name?’

  ‘Meenal.’

  ‘Hahn, okay. You know these type of girls from that community’—I realized as he went on that he had asked my name to check my religious identity—‘are all like that. I also found out from a TV reporter that Maria has a friend called Ejaz. You must investigate if there’s an underworld nexus.’ In this moment of crazed grief, longheld prejudices had unmoored and surfaced.

  Amarnath Grover wanted to show me his shop before I left Kanpur. I got the sense that he wanted to talk alone, away from the family. But in the car for the most part he was quiet, looking out of the window, exhausted by his catharsis. He broke the silence only to ask again, strangely insistent, ‘Have you heard anything bad about Neeraj? Because if you have, tell us, we must know.’

  But I had no revelations to make.

  The shop was redolent with the smell of photocopy ink, and doing brisk business despite the patina of neglect. ‘We’ve added a few computers so it can also double up as a cyber café. Recently I sat down and put together Neeraj’s papers and investments, it totalled Rs 17 lakh. All that and this.’ He waved a hand around, his face full of strain, overrunning with tears. ‘This shop, it was his. Isn’t this world enough?’

  8

  THE UNRAVELLING

  ‘The f
act is that the crime is never perfect.’

  —Jean Baudrillard

  DETAILS OF THE material evidence recovered and recorded by the Crime Branch during their investigation were like a Mensa puzzle. All the clues to Neeraj’s killing—the method and also the malevolence—lay in these items:

  1. One bone, one foot long, burnt on one side.

  2. Remnants of a burnt bag, red in colour.

  3. Reddish-coloured half-burnt cloth.

  4. Burnt pillow, pillowcase, burnt cloth, and plastic piece, all red.

  5. One white metal chain with small beads found in a burnt and broken condition.

  6. Half-burnt yellow metal chain with a pendant designed like an elephant head.

  7. A small broken bottle of perfume.

  8. A bottle of deodorant with burn marks.

  9. A thin white plastic bottle found in smashed condition.

  10. Coins, chain lock, metal buttons from clothing, all recovered in a blackened state.

  11. Sticks, stones, ash mixed with earth.

  12. Sample of earth recovered from the jungles of Manor.

  13. Sample of a scraping of kitchen wall from flat number 201, Dheeraj Solitaire in Malad.

  14. Control scraping of colour from the same kitchen wall.

  15. Sample of blood found in the rose-coloured curtain in the bedroom of flat 201, Dheeraj Solitaire, Malad.

  16. Sample of blood from the outer latch of the bedroom.

  17. Sample of blood from the television speaker in the bedroom.

  18. Sample of blood from a patterned green-and-white pillow cover.

  19. Bloodstained blue jeans with the label Skinny on the inside.

  20. A pair of women’s size 5 Nike shoes found with faint blood-like stains.

  21. A maroon-coloured half-sleeve XL-size T-shirt with the label Xylem.

  22. One 13-inch chopper with an 8-inch-long blade recovered from the jungles of Manor.

  23. A Santro car bearing the licence plate MH-04-BQ-9866.

  24. Two black rexine covers from the back seat of the aforementioned car.

  25. One black full mat and two foot mats recovered from the rear seat of the said car.

  26. One rubber mat recovered from the boot of the said car.

  27. Two pieces of sun-protection shield.

  28. One parcel containing bones.

  29. One 9-inch-long pointed tapering knife with a 5-inch blade with the following inscribed in English: Lord Stainless Steel.

  30. One yellow-coloured 5-litre plastic can with the words: Saffola Losorb—The Heart Of A Family.

  31. The cardboard packing of a 13-inch chopper and plastic cover. The content recorded on the packaging reads thus: SKU no. (Barcode no.) 100000432, bread knife LC0613-2LC. MRP all taxes Rs 265, Hypercity price Rs 179.

  32. A silver and gold N-95 Nokia handset with the IMEI number 354835/01/278290/1 and sim card no. 8991920000080-656795 (belonging to Neeraj Grover).

  33. A CD of accused Maria Susairaj’s audition for the role of Draupadi for the serial Mahabharat produced by Balaji Telefilms.

  These articles, neatly packed in an aluminium trunk, were court property, brought out occasionally to corroborate testimonies during a cross-examination, and opened barely a few feet away from where Maria Susairaj smiled sanguinely, and Emile Jerome stared grimly into the middle distance. Occasionally, a colourful plastic packet holding Neeraj’s remains, or a bloodstained article would be unwrapped, releasing the dank and rancid odour of death. The entire courtroom recoiled visibly when this happened.

  ‘Have you seen Million Dollar Baby? There’s a great line in there. Clint Eastwood telling that girl Hillary Swank, who desperately wants to box: “No matter how good a fighter you are, you need to learn to defend yourself.”’

  Inspector Raorane never was a pugilist—volleyball was his preferred sport—but he liked to lie low; keep his guard up. The investigating officer in the Neeraj Grover case had been ducking my calls for weeks before finally agreeing to meet, on his first day off in a month, at the behest of Rakesh Maria. He called me to his office at the Maharashtra Housing Board (MHB) police station at Borivali, where among other things the inspector ensured communal peace, maintained a roster of duties, and solved routine cases of theft. He sought transfer from the high-profile Crime Branch to a police station after his wife fell ill. MHB, in the innards of Borivali, away from the glittering malls and glass-fronted buildings, was close to his home and saved him the commute.

  The odd locations of police stations in Mumbai, and their varying stages of disrepair, merit a monograph if not a whole book. The Oshiwara police station, for instance, resembled Lego blocks assembled by a disinterested child. Wadala TT was situated in the middle—yes, smack in the middle—of busy railway tracks. Go complain at your own peril. Likewise Yellow Gate near the docks lay at the end of a deserted lane with no lights. At the Antop Hill police station the only drinking water available was from a filthy sink plumbed right at the door of an even filthier loo. When the promised land for their building failed to materialize, the cops at MHB, like their counterparts at Meghwadi, Bhandup, DN Nagar, Malvani, and Mulund, were instructed to set up the police station within their own living quarters.

  It was a curious coexistence made unremarkable only by our acceptance of it. The sounds of an Ekta Kapoor serial pierced the thin walls of a sub-inspector’s home and clashed with the piteous cries emanating from the detection room next door where the cops were probably interrogating a thief—doing their ‘daily practice’ in Inspector Raorane’s euphemism. I made my way up the uneven steps—the grille of the lift was strangely mangled as if some mountain man had had a go at it—and bumped into a child running past the detention room for women prisoners. On the second floor, outside the home adjacent to the senior inspector’s office, someone had painted an elaborate rangoli, signalling beauty in the midst of brutal harshness. That, it seemed to me, was one of the ways we coped in this manic city.

  Inspector Raorane was a trim, energetic forty-five-year-old with a bushy moustache, marked by an alert, curious manner (he saw me scrawling my notes and wanted to know if I had learnt shorthand), but there was no denying the exhaustion that seemed to have seeped into the pores of his face, causing a slight puffiness. A few mounted photographs of him being felicitated by the then home minister R.R. Patil were the only concession to decoration in an otherwise bare, impersonal office equipped with a steel cupboard, a functional table, and two moulded plastic chairs.

  ‘Did you hear of the famous heist at Joy Alukkas jewellers in Hyderabad?’ he countered when I asked about the photographs. Some years ago Inspector Raorane, then posted at Dahisar with unit XII of the Crime Branch, was in his office surfing channels when he came across the news of the sensational robbery at Hyderabad’s biggest jewellery store. As he watched the details emerge, a grin spread across the officer’s face. The jewel thief’s modus operandi bore the remarkable stamp of a man Inspector Raorane had been shadowing for a year, ever since his release from prison in Mumbai. His name was Vimal Rambali Singh, a man who, in Inspector Raorane’s words was ugly as sin and sharper than a machete. ‘I got on to the phone with an informer of mine who himself was a thief and who knew Singh,’ he said. ‘So, your chief has been hard at work, I told him.’

  ‘We knew that Singh would have to come to Mumbai with his booty—he had cleared all the jewels from the heavily decked mannequins on the three floors of the store, not touching the vaults knowing well they’d have a more complex operating system [it was this strategy that had given him away to Inspector Raorane]. Only this city offers the anonymity where you can sell jewels worth six crore and no one will move a muscle.’

  His hunch proved correct when Singh arrived in Mumbai within days of the heist. Inspector Raorane laid a trap for him at a restaurant at Bandra East. ‘We got him but he didn’t have the jewels on him, so we kept him in the office, confiscated his mobile, and waited. I knew if he didn’t reach within a certain time, one of his associates wou
ld call and then we could trace that call. Our job was made easier when the associate called from a landline which belonged to a hotel in Grant Road.’ In thirty-five minutes flat—he called it the most perilous journey of his life—Inspector Raorane and his team landed at the hotel. ‘It was my lucky day. Just as we were going up the stairs to Singh’s associate’s room, we bumped into a man carrying a huge bag, heading out of the hotel. I don’t know what instinct made me run to the reception and ask for that associate. The receptionist pointed at the man heading out. Had I postponed even by a couple of minutes, he would have just melted into Mumbai’s crowd and also melted the jewels. This,’ he said pointing to the pictures of the felicitation, ‘was for that.’

  The sharp sense of self he evinced came in part from his education. Inspector Raorane grew up in a tiny village, Navale, in Sindhudurg district, which had a population of less than five hundred, and where his father, now eighty-seven, was the local schoolteacher. Originally Sisodiyas from Udaipur, his ancestors got land in Sindhudurg in lieu of valorous services rendered. His maternal grandfather was in the police force in Mumbai during British rule. ‘We are an educated family,’ he said without emphasis, though the pride was unmistakable.

  After school he moved to Kolhapur to study English literature. Why literature, I asked, intrigued by the detective’s choice of subject. ‘Because,’ he said, taking his time to answer, ‘…literature keeps you alive. And that’s true of it in any language. Look at P.L. Deshpande’s work in Marathi, it’s not just some comedy, he gives you a clear picture of what human beings are all about. Literature gives us perception.’

  After completing an MA he joined the Ramakrishna Paramhans Mahavidyalaya at Osmanabad (‘it had a great library’) as the junior English lecturer. This was in 1984–5 when Rakesh Maria was also posted in the area as the Superintendent of Police (SP). ‘My landlady had a dispute with her neighbour but she was a senior citizen who lived alone and had no one to help her, so I went along with her to meet the SP. He was most helpful and both of us came back quite impressed with his personality.’