The acquittal of a man for a model's murder in a glitzy restaurant is forcing India to reassess its legal system, writes David Orr in Delhi
Had she lived, Jessica Lal might well have become famous in India. Her death, however, has made the late model and aspiring television presenter known to millions. Her face has been appearing regularly on Indian TV screens and is rarely out of the Indian newspapers and magazines. Countless thousands of SMS text messages have been sent in her name. The Indian president and leading politicians have been talking about her.
The phenomenal publicity surrounding Jessica Lal was prompted by the recent acquittal of the man widely believed to have murdered her in a glitzy Delhi restaurant in 1999. If the crime caused a sensation at the time, the verdict caused outrage. Such has been the force of public and media opinion that the police in the capital have appealed against the acquittal and ordered a re-investigation. There may be a retrial.
"Somehow, this case has touched a chord with people," says well-known TV presenter Karan Thapar. "There's no doubt it's been exploited by television and newspapers but there's also been an incredible public response. This was such an evident miscarriage of justice and it came after a number of others. People had become fed up."
That this crime has become such a cause célèbre is no doubt partly due to the circumstances in which it took place. Jessica Lal was shot at point-blank range in the Tamarind Court, an upmarket restaurant owned by a leading Delhi socialite, Bina Ramani. The premises (now closed) were heaving with hundreds of revellers in the early hours of April 29th, 1999. The clientele included personalities from the worlds of Indian fashion and cinema as well as politicians and half a dozen police officers.
"There's been a lot of puerile interest among the middle class," says socialite and public relations director, Dilip Cherian. "People are fascinated with the whole scene at the Tamarind Court, who was there and who was not there."
The night of the murder, Jessica Lal (34) was working as a part-time barmaid. When she refused to serve drinks to a man or a group of men at the bar, an argument erupted. A gun was produced and two shots were fired. One hit the roof and the other hit the raven-haired Lal in the eye, killing her almost instantly. Amid the confusion, nearly everyone fled the scene and blood stains were hastily cleaned away.
Several people came forward as witnesses, saying they had seen the man who had shot her. All fingers pointed to Manu Sharma, the son of a leading Congress party politician, who had been seen at the restaurant with a party of friends.
But what seemed like an open-and-shut case quickly turned into a shambles. One by one, key figures changed their statements, saying they could not identify the gunman after all.
The main witness was a young model-actor friend of Jessica Lal called Shayan Munshi. Like her, he was making a few extra rupees working behind the bar on the night of the crime. After signing a statement identifying Sharma as the killer, he changed his testimony, saying he could not understand Hindi and had been coerced into putting his name to a document he could not read.
"This business of witnesses turning hostile is a big problem in India," says retired chief justice of India Visheshwar Nath Khare. "They do it because they've been threatened or because they've been offered bribes. Sometimes the police themselves are involved in witnesses changing their statements. The law needs to be changed so, in future, statements are taken before a magistrate and not by policemen."
Manu Sharma went into hiding after the murder and, though he turned up after a week, he was never made to account for the disappearance of the gun he was licensed to carry. While the prosecution maintained that both bullets found at the crime scene were from the same weapon, the forensic science laboratory insisted the two bullets it had received came from different firearms.
On February 21st last, Manu Sharma and his alleged accomplices - members of a so-called "rich kids rat pack" - were acquitted by a Delhi court of involvement in the murder. The judge declared there was not enough evidence to convict them. He also criticised the police investigation for having been "shoddy" and the prosecution for having "miserably failed" to prove its case.
In all there were nine accused, among them Vikas Yadav, another politician's son, who is said to have aided the escape of Sharma and the destruction of incriminating evidence. All men - apart from Yadav, who is being held on remand in connection with another murder - walked free.
Jessica Lal's mother died of cancer a couple of years after her daughter's murder and her father suffered a stroke that caused serious memory loss. So it has been left to Jessica's sister, Sabrina, to continue the family fight for justice. Sabrina reacted fiercely to news of the acquittal, accusing several of the witnesses of having taken bribes.
Of one witness, since dead, she said: "We used to laugh about it. He used to come and ask me his worth. How much should I take, he would ask. I don't know how much he finally took, but he used to complain that Shayan Munshi was getting a crore (10 million rupees or almost €190,000)".
MANU SHARMA, A product of the prestigious Mayo College - sometimes known as the Eton of India - today runs a trendy pub-disco called Blue Ice in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh and helps manage his family's business interests.
Reeling at the response to Sharma's acquittal - candle-lit vigils at the crime scene, protests by university students and an unprecedented media campaign - Delhi police have admitted serious failures, even collusion between police officers and the accused. During the week, the police challenged the verdict, lodging an appeal in the High Court against the acquittal of the nine accused. The police say they are studying the way the investigation was carried out and have registered a fresh case against "unnamed persons". In past days, "lookout notices" have been issued to prevent witnesses from leaving the country.
The police are now expected to look into the telephone records of the investigating officers, some of whom are thought to have been in contact with the accused and to have tampered with evidence.
The police may also want to question Surender Sharma again, the discredited investigating officer who was recently shunted to a backwater in the force. He has indicated that one of the two empty cartridges was replaced at the forensic science laboratory by a ballistics expert employed by the father of one of the alleged accomplices.
There is considerable circumstantial evidence linking Sharma and his cronies to the crime. Manu Sharma's licensed Beretta pistol and the bullet recovered from the body of the victim were of .22 bore. It has already been established that, prior to the murder, Sharma had bought bullets whose calibre matched that of the bullets fired on the fateful night at the Tamarind Court. Nor has it been denied that the main accused and his alleged accomplices fled the crime scene, leaving behind a vehicle that was registered in the name of one of Sharma's companies.
"Nobody actually thought that life would imitate Bollywood in such a blatant manner," declared India's leading magazine, Outlook, in a recent cover article devoted to Jessica Lal. "Rich and influential accused, witnesses being bought off, conniving cops, manipulation of evidence, and all of that capped by a controversial judgment."
However, that judgment has not gone unnoticed in high places. Sonia Gandhi, chairman of the Indian Congress party, has joined leading lawyers in calling for a change of legislation to protect witnesses and punish those who commit perjury. The Indian president, Abdul Kalam, says he "will take necessary action", having received some 200,000 e-mails about the case. The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has admitted that the Indian justice system is in urgent need of reform.
"I feel very heartened, it's an amazing feeling," says Sabrina Lal. "I was so disheartened [by the verdict]. The fight had gone out of me. But the response from the media and the people has been tremendous. People I didn't know or who didn't even know Jessica are telling me they're right behind me. That gives me the strength to carry on."
This whole episode is forcing India to reassess its legal and judicial systems. It is too early to say if there will be a retrial but there are many who believe there might, after all, be some justice for Jessica Lal.