Almost eight years after a young bartender was gunned down in front of onlookers, her high-profile killer is finally behind bars. SONYA FATAH explains
FOCUS FOLLOWUP, The Globe and Mail, Saturday, February 3, 2007
Jessica Lall during her modelling days
SONYA FATAH
NEW DELHI — Manu Sharma once had a life of privilege. As the son of a Congress Party leader and a minister in Haryana’s state government, he was the product of a social class that expects preferential treatment even if it puts them above the law.
But this week, instead of drinking and dancing to the wee hours in the clubs of Delhi, Mr. Sharma was adjusting to life in his new home: Tihar, the maximum-security prison for hardened criminals.
Last month, he was sentenced to life for a crime that shocked people across India: the April, 1999, shooting of Jessica Lall, a 34-year-old model and bartender, killed because she refused to serve him a drink after closing time.
Canadians who read about The Case of the Woman ‘Nobody Killed’ (Focus, March 18) may be surprised that India’s judicial system took almost eight years to convict Mr. Sharma, but many people here still can’t believe he was convicted at all.
The ruling came less than a year after Mr. Sharma was acquitted, for the second time, by the Delhi High Court of having murdered Ms. Lall, a model who had been tending bar at Tamarind Court, a ritzy restaurant run by Bina Ramani and her Canadian husband, painter Georges Mailhot.
The acquittals came amid allegations often made in high-profile cases in India: police collusion and the bribing of key witnesses. Mr. Sharma and his friends are alleged to have paid millions to silence witnesses, a tactic of no use against the appeal court that put him away.
Public pressure forced police to reopen the investigation. Eventually, Mr. Sharma was sentenced largely on the testimony of Ms. Ramani, who says that “we got many threats, and offers of bribes. The offers got bigger every time we said no. In the end, they stopped.”
When the conviction was handed down, Ms. Lall’s younger sister, Sabrina, uncorked a bottle of fine champagne at her home in south Delhi. “The moment I heard the verdict, I felt a sense of relief,” she recalls. “I lost my soulmate.”
Now 38, Sabrina Lall campaigned tirelessly against Mr. Sharma’s acquittal. Since losing Jessica, she and her surviving siblings, sister Veena Chatterjee and brother Rajpat Lall, have also lost both parents.
Sabrina and her father, Ajit, sat through the two years and eight months that Mr. Sharma’s trial lasted, fearing he would get off despite shooting Jessica point-blank in front of many guests.
First Ms. Lall’s mother was found to have breast cancer. “The doctor said she had no will to live,” Then her father had several strokes, and died just after Mr. Sharma’s second acquittal last Feb. 21.
The long-awaited guilty verdict is expected to have a major impact. For a public weary of a legal system that puts power and money above rule of law, it is a welcome change and has done much to restore confidence in the legal system.
On the Mumbai-based blog Sachiniti, people reflected happily, many of them having participated in candlelight vigils, protests and letter-writing campaigns against Mr. Sharma’s acquittal. “As a citizen, one is relieved in the knowledge . . . that ‘we count,’ ” one person wrote. “Justice might not be blind after all,” another wrote.
The Lall case is one of several in which the legal system is beginning to reflect democratic values. Other examples are the controversial killings of Priyadarshini Mattoo, who was raped and murdered in her uncle’s apartment, and Nitish Katara, who was kidnapped and killed and his body burned to a crisp.
In both cases, those accused also are sons of influential figures. Mr. Katara’s alleged killer is Vikas Yadav, a co-accused in the Lall case who was sentenced to four years in prison for destroying evidence.
As Mr. Mailhot wrote in an e-mail to friends, “charging witnesses for perjury is almost unheard of in India — until now. The judge who acquitted the accused has been disgraced. The police are now the ones under a cloud. We look forward to a return to normalcy.”
Jessica Lall grew up in a middle-class Anglican family with a brother and her sisters. Her father was a professional, and her mother taught at the Catholic day school all three girls attended.
Now a partner in a travel agency, Sabrina Lall says Mr. Sharma’s life sentence is especially meaningful to her because when the case first went to court, she and her family believed that an event attended by so many people would provide a long list of willing witnesses. “We assumed that this was an open and shut case,” she says.
But they were no strangers to Indian justice and knew the accused and his eight co-accused were connected. “There are two things that work in this situation,” Ms. Lall says. “Money and threats. In this case money worked brilliantly.”
It didn’t work for the Tamarind’s Ms. Ramani and Mr. Mailhot, who had a turbulent time as a result.
But now, Mr. Mailhot writes in his e-mail, “Though we cannot rejoice in the misfortune of the accused, we were vindicated. Bina went from villain to heroine.”
Like the Lalls, he and Ms. Ramani say a shadow has lifted from their lives with the final verdict. “I think the justice system created history,” she says. “I hope it will send a message for the future.”
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