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Who killed Sandhya Singh? Eight months after her body was found, no one knows for sure. Or if they do, they are not talking.

The case has all the ingredients of a sensational drama: a beautiful though somewhat gullible mother, her distraught family, missing jewels — and several angles.

Sandhya, the family says, was their epicentre. Her husband Jai Prakash Singh is a commissioner in the central excise department in Indore. The family moved to Mumbai after daughter Rajrajeshwari finished school and joined Ruia College. They lived in NRI colony in Seawoods, Navi Mumbai.

Son Raghuveer studied law at the SVKM Law College in Juhu. Three bouts of malaria, the family says, forced him to take a break from studies. Family friends describe the 23-year-old as sensitive — fond of nature and music. He is believed to have inherited his musical genes from his mother's side. Music composers Jatin-Lalit are his maternal uncles and Sulakshana and Vijeta Pandit, former singer-actresses, his aunts.

Sandhya, 50, beautiful and fair with dark eyes, was fond of wearing jewellery. She was also friendly to a fault. 'She was very social and every evening when I came home from work I'd find her surrounded by maids, the maid's mother and family, or somebody she had just met or the lady from the beauty parlour or simply some friend,' Jai Prakash recalls.

The family was just about to move back to Indore when disaster struck. She went out one day — and never returned.

It's possible that her jewels were at the root of the disappearance. Raghuveer often warned her about wearing too much jewellery — from heavy gold items to diamonds and ornaments that she had got made after seeing the designs on actresses in TV series.

On November 25 last year, she informed her family that some jewellery was missing from her Seawoods flat. 'I don't remember a single time in any new posting when she had not lost a piece of her jewellery. Everywhere I was posted, somebody stole her jewellery,' Jai Prakash says.

She went to lodge a complaint and met assistant police inspector Anil Behrani at the police station. He went to her flat for an investigation and subsequently some of the jewellery was recovered from a maid. Within the next few days, he had befriended Sandhya. He even took her around Mumbai to show her some flats in housing projects.

On the morning of December 13, Raghuveer offered to drop his mother to the bank, where she was to have deposited her jewellery. She told him that her friend Uma Gaud was accompanying her, and instead walked to Uma's flat in the same complex. She was carrying her jewellery with her, Raghuveer had said. A maid's daughter too saw her keeping the jewellery packet in her purse.

Gaud told the police that she dropped Sandhya near the bank at 11am. Sandhya's phone was found switched off after 10.28am. At around 1.30pm, two witnesses said they had seen someone like Sandhya in the Vahal area in an autorickshaw with a person who matched the description of the police officer. Uma's residence comes under the Vahal range.

The distraught family named the officer at a press conference in Mumbai in February, asking why he was not being questioned, despite the Singhs' suspicions that he could have played a role in the murder. The charges made by the family could not be substantiated and the police officer was unavailable for comment.

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  Illustration: Sumitro Basak

On January 28, 40 days after she disappeared, her skeletal remains were found by two British birdwatchers in a marshland near her home.

The family says they got to know about this from the media. The body was identified by a few items such as a rudraksha (holy bead) which her husband had gifted her. Her purse was found on the same spot a day later. There was no sign of the jewellery,

The family says that when she disappeared, they had thought she was carrying jewellery worth Rs 20 lakh. But when they opened her lockers, they found jewellery worth almost Rs 1.5 crore missing. 'Just the solitaire she wore on her finger was worth Rs 15 lakh,' Jai Prakash adds.

The Singhs had complained about lack of progress in the case under the Navi Mumbai police, because of which it had had been taken over by the crime branch. But they rue that nothing improved even after that. One day they were told a contract killer had been seen in the area; another day they were informed that neighbourhood boys could be behind the murder. And then finally they said Raghuveer was a suspect. The police said his cellphone records showed that he was in the neighbourhood where his mother's body was found. But the family points out that the same cellphone tower range covers his house. Raghuveer has filed for anticipatory bail.

'I cannot believe the extent to which the police will go to make a case against an innocent boy. It is obvious that the police are trying to protect someone and they are simply misdirecting the investigation. Why would a son want to kill his own mother? The jewellery has been lying in the house and anyway it is his. Most importantly he loved her as much as she loved him,' Jai Prakash says. The two fought, he admits, but in the way mothers and sons fight.

Gaud is said to have left for Jaipur. There has been no response to a request to the police commissioner for his comments.

The cohesive Singh family has come apart. Jai Prakash is believed to be a shadow of his former self. 'He has lost his wife and now stands to lose his son and both in a cruel and unjust way,' says his brother, Sanjay Prakash, DIG, CISF. For the Singhs, there is no closure.