FATAL ATTRACTION: Tanya and Kishore

It’s difficult to fathom what Bangalore BPO boy Gururaj Kishore was thinking when he drove a kitchen knife into the abdomen and chest of the woman he claims he loved. He stabbed her 33 times — but all that Kishore offered by way of explanation was that he went into a fit of violent rage when she refused to marry him.

The confession triggers questions: how far will a jilted lover — man or woman — go to give vent to a sense of rejection?

Evidently, pretty far. “About 99 per cent of those lodged in jails across West Bengal are not hardened criminals, but those who committed crimes in a fit of rage or in the heat of the moment,” observes B.D. Sharma, inspector general of prisons, West Bengal. “And quite a few of them,” Sharma adds, “are jilted lovers”. The crimes that they commit after rejection range from murder to mutilation, rape to robbery, stalking to attempted suicide.

At Calcutta’s Alipore Central Jail, Nikhil Chandra Ghosh, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his wife when she went out with another man, flashes back to that fateful moment 23 years ago. Now 56, gaunt and grey, Ghosh remembers how he was “reeling from the shock of rejection.” And the man who once traded in wholesale rubber products says he has no recollection of strangling her.

“All I remember is coming home early that day. It was afternoon. Usually I came back in the evening. I worked hard at my business and I wanted my wife to be happy. I adored her. I wrapped her up in silk and gold. Brought her sweets and flowers,” he says.

Ghosh was told by a neighbour that she was at the park with someone else. “I followed her and caught her redhanded. She looked at me and I knew she didn’t need me anymore. I don’t remember carrying a knife. I think it was the other man who had it. I snatched it from his hand and would have killed him too but he fled. They told me I stabbed my wife in the chest and then I strangled her. But I don’t remember it.”

Experts point out that a rebuff can spark a spectrum of emotions. “A rejection can stir up a host of negative feelings such as inadequacy, jealousy or betrayal in anyone,” says Debashish Ray, Calcutta-based clinical psychiatrist. But, Ray explains, the emotions do not have the same effect on everyone. “A person prone to a psychological disorder such as, for instance, impulse control disorder, in which the susceptible person is unable to restrain himself or herself from emotional outbursts, is likely to react suddenly and violently in a situation where these emotions are triggered.”

And while many people faced with rejection may show some signs or degrees of disturbed behaviour, Ray points out that those “who have the biological trait or vulnerability to develop a major psychiatric disorder” are the ones likely to cross the threshold into the area of a crime.

Milon Ghosh, also lodged for life in Alipore Central Jail for the murder of his wife, overstepped that boundary in that split of a second — when he struck a match and set fire to the synthetic sari his wife was wearing. As he recalls the moment — his eyes wet — he looks disturbed. “She told me that she didn’t want me anymore and that there was someone else. Then I don’t remember anything except that she was running out of our bedroom screaming and then I ran after her to try and save her. But she was burning. I took her to the hospital, where she died.” Ghosh sits up suddenly in his chair, shivers and slumps back into it. He wishes that he could go back to that moment and change it.

But he knows that it’s too late — like many others who have crossed the line and regretted it later. Calcutta nurse Pinky Sarkar remembers a case several years ago when a man was brought in one afternoon with deep gashes on his cheeks. “His girlfriend had slashed his face with a razor blade when his marriage was fixed with someone else. But she was really remorseful. She used to weep inconsolably at the hospital, though she wasn’t allowed in.” The boy survived and no charges were pressed against her.

Unrequited love, clearly, is one of the major factors behind crimes of passion. On July 26, 2004, a West Delhi businessman, Mangal Singh, stalked 15-year-old Ritika and finally stabbed her to death when she was on her way to school one day. A Calcutta promoter, who was in prison for a number of forgery cases and whose girlfriend reportedly “got tired of waiting for him”, had told his inmates that he would disfigure her so badly when he got out of jail that “no one else would want her”. He kept his promise and one evening intercepted her in a street corner and flung a bottle of acid on her face. He’s back in jail.

Points out Calcutta High court criminal lawyer Joymalya Bagchi, “While crimes resulting out of being jilted are not recognised as a separate category of crime, the defence is often built on the lines of ‘grave and sudden provocation’”. That is, the one who rejects is often blamed for provoking the state of mind which has triggered the commission of the crime. In fact, in some parts of the world — like in France before the Napoleonic Code of laws came into existence — “crimes of passion” were regarded with more tolerance and sensitivity than other cases. Even today, defence lawyers across the world use it to garner sympathy for a defendant.

The subject has generated so much interest that a great many films revolve around it — from Hollywood’s Addicted to Love (where two jilted people set out to make the lives of their former lovers miserable) to the recent Bollywood Ankahee (where a mistress kills herself when told she’s not the one for her lover). And much of these reel characters are based on what jilted lovers do in real life.

The actions often range from the brazen to the bizarre. A jilted wife robbed her ex-husband’s credit card and ran up a huge bill on clothes and jewellery. There are hundreds of cases of men taking to drugs and drinks after being ditched by their lovers. On May 6, Manju, a 16-year-old Bangalore boy, set himself ablaze after his girlfriend refused to marry him. Others take to humiliating and hurting the rejector, as cricketer Manoj Prabhakar’s estranged wife recently did. In a television interview, she accused him of “torturing” her “in collusion with a failed Bollywood actress.”

Ray explains, “The nature of the crime a jilted lover commits — that is whether it is intrusive or extrusive — depends on the psychological make-up of the person. Someone who feels more inadequate, he points out, may harm himself. “But if the balance is tipped and the person feels more betrayed, he may turn his ire on the object of his love.”

Gururaj Kishore did just that.