Totally intriguing

The arrest by Mumbai police of Indrani Mukerjea, the CEO of a media company and wife of well-known TV executive Peter Mukerjea, in connection with the murder of Sheena Bora, has not just made headlines but sent the media and the urban classes into a tizzy. Sheena, it turns out, is not Indrani’s sister, but daughter, born out of wedlock when she was a minor, the result of repeated rapes, allegedly by her step-father.

Sheena has a brother, too, out to get his mother convicted, claiming that he was to be her “next target.” Why he did not become one is a mystery. The story of the Mukerjeas and Boras – Indrani had given her siblings the title of her Assamese father -- is too bizarre to comprehend. The worst part is that Sheena was murdered three years ago, her body burnt and thrown away in the woods far from Mumbai.

None knew it, no police investigations took place. Even a police case was no registered. None knows who tipped the police. Indrani is painted the proverbial Femme Fatale. She killed her adult daughter, a possible case of honour killing since she did not approve of her alliance with Peter’s son Rahul. The complicity in crime of former husband Khanna remains unexplained.

Still being unveiled, this is a tale of murder, hidden identity, sensational allegations and countless accusations. It is a ‘hot’ story that has gripped media that has gone highly speculative. The social media is agog. The over-spicy stuff must have ‘inspired’ many to script a novel, a play or a movie.

Where does it all lead to?

Is Indrani the villain or victim, or both? Is she a social climber who married Peter for his riches and position, adding to them both? Whatever the truth, she seems damned by all. Peter has distanced himself, declaring at the best, that she is “innocent till proved guilty. The country’s most-sought recruiter of media talent seems too blinded by love to have done no checking of antecedents of his wife-cum-business partner.

He claims to be ‘shocked’, and no more. Totally ignorant of his wife’s past relationships and most certainly, the murder. Besides a 15-year love marriage, the two were a team at work, very ambitious and very successful. The husband’s awe and ignorance question one’s credulity. The account of Indrani’s child-abuse victimhood comes, not from family (or families) but from friends.

Have love and marital bliss evaporated with the law catching up?

Trying not to be judgmental, one is left numb at human exploitation at one end and blinding ambitions at the other. It depicts a highly amoral money-driven lifestyle that the “Page 3” community lives and flaunts, which is jealously coveted from a distance by many.

It also underscores the woes and violence of high-society living, of crime behind the closed doors. That it happened within a family is a sad commentary on our fast-changing social and moral norms. Are we becoming a society of carpetbaggers.