Emile Jerome

She seemed to be no different from the thousands of aspiring actresses who pound the pavements of Bollywood every day — ambitious, go-getting and probably willing to do whatever it took to bag a role. One could hardly have foreseen that Maria Monica Susairaj would end up at the centre of a gruesome murder — one where she was accused of having helped her fiancé chop up her lover into pieces and dispose of the body.

In a judgment that has evoked media outrage, this week a Mumbai sessions court acquitted both Susairaj and Emile Jerome, a former naval officer, of the charge of murdering Neeraj Grover on May 7, 2008. It convicted the 31-year-old Susairaj for destruction of evidence under the Indian Penal Code’s Section 201. Jerome, who was Susairaj’s fiancé at the time, has been convicted of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 (Part 1) of the IPC. Susairaj got a three-year jail sentence and as she has already spent three years in prison she will be released soon. Jerome got a 10-year prison term of which he has already served three.

In fact, things are suddenly looking extremely bright for Susairaj. Not only will she walk free after helping Jerome destroy the evidence of Neeraj Grover’s murder in such a macabre fashion, but the break in Bollywood that she had so passionately coveted may also become a reality. Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma, who was planning a movie on the sensational murder story, has tweeted that he will offer her a lead role soon.

Soft-spoken and self-composed, Susairaj is attractive all right. Her eyes — she never misses the kajal — are a striking dark brown, fringed with long thick lashes. Even in prison, she was always well turned out and was once seen sporting a pretty yellow kurti and blue jeans. At her final hearing, she wore a pair of white tights and a knee-length kurti. She also wore tiny bits of gold jewellery, thin black plastic bangles and a cross shaped pendant.

Of course, it is an irony that it took a murder for Susairaj to get a foothold in Bollywood. The circumstances of the murder hinge on the age-old love triangle: Neeraj Grover, a television executive, promised Susairaj a role in a TV serial, but failed to keep his promise. He ended up having a relationship with her. And Emile Jerome, her fiancé, caught him in his underpants in Susairaj’s flat and killed him in a fit of rage.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: Maria Susairaj being taken to a sessions court after the murder

So who’s the real Maria Susairaj? Was she two-timing her fiancé with Grover? Or was she merely putting on an act of being in love with Grover in the hope he would give her a break in TV? Was she a hapless victim of the lust and jealousy of two men? Or did she lead both of them on — a cold and ruthless woman who, after Grover was murdered, had sex with Jerome twice (she claimed in her testimony that Jerome had, in fact, raped her) and went out to buy a chopper to cut up the corpse?

Grover’s friends testify that she was seen kissing him passionately on the dance floor of D’Ultimate pub in Andheri, a Mumbai suburb, on May 3, 2008, three days before the murder. In his statement to the police, Nishant Lal, a friend of the victim, says, “We had this meeting place at Cafe Coffee Day at Fame Adlabs. On May 4, two days before the murder, Neeraj and Deepak Kumar were already there. I had been noticing that Neeraj was always talking about Maria... Deepak and I ribbed him about Maria and we asked him with a twinkle in our eye whether she was his special someone. He said it was a physical relationship. At that precise moment, Maria landed there. She asked Neeraj what was happening about her break in television serials. Was she getting a role, at all? He said, ‘Jaldi ho jayega’. When Neeraj went outside for a while, Maria asked us, ‘Is he making a fool out of me?’ She later stormed out in anger.”

Maria Susairaj comes from a well-to-do family in Mysore. Her father is a building contractor. Susairaj and Jerome both went to Mysore’s St Matthias School where she was two years senior to him. She is said to have been an average student but was good at singing and dancing. By 1999, she had quit college and got busy with modelling. She landed a few roles in Kannada films as well.

Dayal Padmanabhan, who directed Susairaj in the Kannada film Ok Saar Ok, remembers her as an average, but professional, actor. “She did not have any training in acting. But she worked hard on her roles,” he says.

Madan Patel, her co-star, however, had an unpleasant brush with the actress. “She was late on the sets several times, because of which shooting got stalled. When my manager had a word with her, she told people that I was harassing her,” remembers Patel, who stayed away from her after that. “At that time she was in a relationship with a choreographer. It was public knowledge,” he adds.

Susairaj soon began to look beyond the Kannada film industry. She wanted a career in Bollywood. Between 2005 and 2008, she frequently came to Mumbai looking for acting assignments. During her first stint in the city, she even did an acting course at Asha Chandra Acting Academy.

It was in March 2008 that she met Neeraj Grover, who promised her a break in television. They became close almost at once. In his statement to the police, Haresh Saundarva — one of the inmates of the flat at Jyoti Apartments, Seven Bungalows, Andheri, which Grover rented with his friends — said, “On May 1, 2008, he came home with Maria. He said she was looking for a break in television. He said that since she didn’t find a pad to live in, could she put up with them. Every night Maria and Neeraj would come home and stay put in the living room till 1pm. And then they would troop into my bedroom and sleep together on the floor. I used the sole bed in the room. In the morning they woke up and left together. The situation got pretty uncomfortable on the fourth day and we had to ask Neeraj to desist from bringing Maria home.”

Susairaj finally managed to find a flat in a building in Malad. She shifted there on May 6, 2008. In fact, it was Grover who helped her shift to her new house. The next day Emile Jerome landed up from Kochi, saw him in her flat, and killed him.

Though Susairaj will walk free for the moment, the prosecution will definitely appeal against the judgment in a higher court. Thus, it’s unlikely that the curtains have been drawn on one of the most ghastly crimes in recent times. It’s unlikely too that we have had the measure of Susairaj, the woman who was at the centre of it all.