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| MURDER MOST FOUL: (From top) Emile Jerome weeks before his arrest; Maria Monica Susairaj strikes a pose; and St Philomena’s Church in Mysore where the two used to attend Sunday services |
IT was the summer of 1998. Emile Jerome had breezed through his Class X examinations and was seeking admission to a pre-university college in Mysore. He had scored 90 and 95 per cent marks, respectively, in political science and Kannada. A young woman called Maria Monica Susairaj had failed those very subjects in pre-university college that year, and was rather reluctantly preparing for her supplementary exams.
The two were like chalk and cheese. And they chose different paths. Jerome went on to become an Indian naval officer. Susairaj acted in a few Kannada films, struggling for a few years before leaving for Mumbai with dreams of making it big in Bollywood. But they came together — resulting in the death of a young man called Neeraj Grover on May 7, 2008, in Mumbai.
The two were accused of stabbing the television company executive to death, dismembering his body and setting it afire in a forest. Jerome came to know on May 6, 2008, that Grover had stayed at Susairaj’s flat at Malad, a Mumbai suburb. Suspecting that the two were having an affair, he flew down to Mumbai from Cochin and found Grover at his fiancee’s flat.
Tomorrow, appeals filed separately by Jerome and Susairaj are expected to come up at the Bombay High Court for hearings. Despite the two having been convicted and sentenced on July1, 2011, the case is still to be settled. On October 5, the court admitted an appeal by the Maharashtra government challenging the lower court verdict. The government is seeking a higher term for Jerome — sentenced for 10 years for culpable homicide — and Susairaj, convicted for three years for hiding evidence.
As the case returns to the court, Jerome’s friends and acquaintances still can’t believe that he could chop Grover into pieces. After all, Jerome had everything going for him. He was a model student, says Anthony Mary, who taught mathematics at St Matthias High School, Mysore, where Susairaj, two years senior to him, also studied. Jerome was good at studies and in extracurricular activities, while Susairaj loved to dance and sing.
“They were poles apart,” says Mary, recalling her two students.
When Jerome was arrested in connection with the murder of Grover in Mumbai, his school and college mates went into a tizzy. Most couldn’t believe that it was “their” friend who was being mentioned in connection with a murder. “When it was reported that Emile Jerome Mathew had been arrested, we very much assumed that it couldn’t be our Emile as the surname of the accused was given as Mathew. Moreover, we never imagined that he could ever be Maria’s boyfriend,” says a close friend who wishes not to be named.
But it wasn’t long before his friends figured out that something had gone terribly wrong. Jerome was not taking their calls. When they tried to post messages on his profile page on a social networking website, he was nowhere to be found. “He had a profile picture in which he was in his naval uniform escorting then President Abdul Kalam in Kochi, but the entire profile had been erased,” recalls a friend. As the news trickled in and the local and national media turned their spotlight on the families of Jerome and Susairaj, reality dawned upon his friends.
Jerome is currently serving his 10-year sentence while Susairaj is out of jail for she has already served her three years. In August, the Maharashtra government approached the Bombay High Court seeking enhancement of punishment. “Our contention is that the lower court had not taken all the facts into consideration while sentencing Jerome and Susairaj. We have said that Neeraj Grover’s murder was planned and Jerome and Susairaj were conspirators,” says R.V. Kini, the chief prosecutor in the case.
For the family of Jerome, that will be another chapter in what’s clearly an ongoing ordeal. The Malayalee Catholic family — originally from Wayanad in Kerala — doesn’t communicate with outsiders. The gate to their one-storey, three-bedroom house with a small garden, nestling in a leafy neighbourhood on St Mary’s Road in Bangalore, is locked. A white Maruti Swift, a gift from his father after Jerome was commissioned in the Indian Navy, is parked inside. Knocks on the gate prompt Jerome’s father Joseph, a slightly built man of medium height, to emerge at the door. Politely — but firmly — he refuses to entertain questions about his son. “I am sorry but I don’t want to discuss anything related to Emile. We have been through a lot and we don’t want to be harassed any further,” he says.
The quiet of the neighbourhood is disturbed only occasionally by sounds that emanate from a car refitting shop next to Jerome’s house. “We see Emile’s parents only when they come out to water their plants or on Sundays when they go to church. It was a close-knit and a quiet family, but it has become reclusive now,” says Mehran Mohsin, a neighbour.
Jerome’s family has been living in Mysore for 20 years. The family was a regular on Sunday masses at St Philomena’s Church. A senior clerk at the Bank of Maharashtra, Jerome Sr had taken voluntary retirement to concentrate on the education of his two children, Emile and Nirmal who now works in an export house in Bangalore. The father also took to selling life insurance policies after his retirement as a source of income. And his sons were well aware of his dedication to them.
“Emile was a perfect son. He wanted to be in the armed forces, and he achieved his aim. In a way he was living his dream before all this happened,” says Mary, as tears well up in her eyes. Pitching in, M. Kumar, St Matthias’s physical training teacher, points to a diary entry recorded in 1997 when Jerome had won a state-level swimming competition representing the school. “He was good in sports, was a regular on the quizzing circuit and had won awards in debates. He was an out and out all-rounder,” says Kumar.
Jerome also left an impression at Marimallappa Pre-University College in Mysore where he studied from 1998 to 2000. “I kept a close eye on him because he was one of the very few students belonging to the Christian community in the college at that time. He was an intelligent boy with a probing mind. He always had questions at the end of the class,” says his physics teacher, Christopher Joel Joseph.
Tall and good looking, he was popular among the students, especially the girls. He used his popularity to his advantage too. Once, he had a falling out with a classmate over an issue that no one can recall any more. “The classmate wanted to be elected class representative. So Jerome backed a rival candidate for the post. All the girls went with him and his candidate won,” recalls Prabhakar Rao, a friend and batchmate at Marimallappa College. Rao stresses that while he didn’t react to provocation, he didn’t forgive or forget.
Jerome went on to clear his National Defence Academy (NDA) exam in 2000 and joined the NDA at Khadakvasla near Pune, and later the Naval Engineering College in Lonavala. “He was an outstanding cadet,” recalls a former commandant of the college in Lonavala. “His trainers spoke highly of him. If I recall correctly, he was good at swimming.” No one is quite clear about when Jerome connected with Susairaj. “I am pretty sure she hardly knew Jerome in school, even though he, like most other boys, used to ogle at her. But that was it,” says a friend.
In all probability, adds a source close to Susairaj, they got in touch through the social networking website Orkut, as they were both a part of the Matthias School public group on the site. They started seeing each other and the relationship got cemented during their visits to Mysore. He never dropped a hint about the relationship even to his close friends — not even when Jerome had taken some of them for a spin in his brand new car in Mysore, just weeks before his arrest. The boys were reminiscing about their schooldays, when the topic of Susairaj came up. Someone took a “cheap shot” at Susairaj’s “juicy” lifestyle, as reported in the local film magazines. “Emile clearly didn’t like it, although he didn’t say anything except to inform us that he was in touch with her,” says a friend privy to the discussion.
He was equally reserved during his stint at INS Venduruthy, Kochi, where he was last posted. He didn’t talk about marriage, but told his friends he was focused on passing an aviation examination within the navy that would help in his career. Two weeks after the murder, and just the day before his arrest on May 22, 2008, an officer saw him swimming in the pool. “Everything seemed normal. I don’t know a single person who knew anything about Jerome beyond the fact that he was a good officer.”
Murder, he wrote
Few can explain how a popular and pleasant man could go for such a gruesome crime. His friends, however, say they can imagine how his mind worked.
“He was meticulous to a fault,” says a former classmate. Once when a social sciences teacher in Class IX asked him to do a small project on China, he pored over books at the Central Library in Mysore. “He came up with a project that a Chinese scholar would have been proud of,” says the former classmate.
“He was indeed very meticulous in his planning,” says chief prosecutor Kini. “The way he went about destroying evidence from chopping the body to changing the curtains to having the house painted, there was an element of sophistication to the whole thing,” adds Kini.
Even additional sessions judge M.W. Chandwani acknowledged Jerome’s sharpness in his order, noting that during the trial whenever there was any irregularity on part of the prosecution, “accused No. 2 [Jerome] promptly objected” even before his defence lawyer could do so.
How could the “perfect” son, the “ideal” student and the “popular” boy in school and college be a killer? The question, being asked by his friends and teachers, is yet to throw up a convincing answer. But Jerome’s clear mind, experts say, would have helped him maintain a front. “I am not surprised by the reaction of his friends. He was successful in hiding his inner persona from others. Some people use their intelligence to plan and organise their moves very well, which is certainly the case here,” says Rajat Mitra, a psychologist who has assisted the Delhi Police in the past in analysing criminal minds.
But even the best laid plans can go awry. Jerome — now in a uniform numbered “C-31” — is in Mumbai’s Taloja Jail, spending his time teaching other inmates. And somebody or the other is looking at him and shaking his head in disbelief.