SONYA FATAH

Almost eight years after a young bartender was gunned down in front of onlookers, her high-profile killer is finally behind bars. SONYA FATAH explains

FOCUS FOLLOWUP, The Globe and Mail, Saturday, February 3, 2007

Jessica Lall during her modelling days

SONYA FATAH

NEW DELHI — Manu Sharma once had a life of privilege. As the son of a Congress Party leader and a minister in Haryana’s state government, he was the product of a social class that expects preferential treatment even if it puts them above the law.

But this week, instead of drinking and dancing to the wee hours in the clubs of Delhi, Mr. Sharma was adjusting to life in his new home: Tihar, the maximum-security prison for hardened criminals.

Last month, he was sentenced to life for a crime that shocked people across India: the April, 1999, shooting of Jessica Lall, a 34-year-old model and bartender, killed because she refused to serve him a drink after closing time.

Canadians who read about The Case of the Woman ‘Nobody Killed’ (Focus, March 18) may be surprised that India’s judicial system took almost eight years to convict Mr. Sharma, but many people here still can’t believe he was convicted at all.

The ruling came less than a year after Mr. Sharma was acquitted, for the second time, by the Delhi High Court of having murdered Ms. Lall, a model who had been tending bar at Tamarind Court, a ritzy restaurant run by Bina Ramani and her Canadian husband, painter Georges Mailhot.

The acquittals came amid allegations often made in high-profile cases in India: police collusion and the bribing of key witnesses. Mr. Sharma and his friends are alleged to have paid millions to silence witnesses, a tactic of no use against the appeal court that put him away.

Public pressure forced police to reopen the investigation. Eventually, Mr. Sharma was sentenced largely on the testimony of Ms. Ramani, who says that “we got many threats, and offers of bribes. The offers got bigger every time we said no. In the end, they stopped.”

When the conviction was handed down, Ms. Lall’s younger sister, Sabrina, uncorked a bottle of fine champagne at her home in south Delhi. “The moment I heard the verdict, I felt a sense of relief,” she recalls. “I lost my soulmate.”

Now 38, Sabrina Lall campaigned tirelessly against Mr. Sharma’s acquittal. Since losing Jessica, she and her surviving siblings, sister Veena Chatterjee and brother Rajpat Lall, have also lost both parents.

Sabrina and her father, Ajit, sat through the two years and eight months that Mr. Sharma’s trial lasted, fearing he would get off despite shooting Jessica point-blank in front of many guests.

First Ms. Lall’s mother was found to have breast cancer. “The doctor said she had no will to live,” Then her father had several strokes, and died just after Mr. Sharma’s second acquittal last Feb. 21.

The long-awaited guilty verdict is expected to have a major impact. For a public weary of a legal system that puts power and money above rule of law, it is a welcome change and has done much to restore confidence in the legal system.

On the Mumbai-based blog Sachiniti, people reflected happily, many of them having participated in candlelight vigils, protests and letter-writing campaigns against Mr. Sharma’s acquittal. “As a citizen, one is relieved in the knowledge . . . that ‘we count,’ ” one person wrote. “Justice might not be blind after all,” another wrote.

The Lall case is one of several in which the legal system is beginning to reflect democratic values. Other examples are the controversial killings of Priyadarshini Mattoo, who was raped and murdered in her uncle’s apartment, and Nitish Katara, who was kidnapped and killed and his body burned to a crisp.

In both cases, those accused also are sons of influential figures. Mr. Katara’s alleged killer is Vikas Yadav, a co-accused in the Lall case who was sentenced to four years in prison for destroying evidence.

As Mr. Mailhot wrote in an e-mail to friends, “charging witnesses for perjury is almost unheard of in India — until now. The judge who acquitted the accused has been disgraced. The police are now the ones under a cloud. We look forward to a return to normalcy.”

Jessica Lall grew up in a middle-class Anglican family with a brother and her sisters. Her father was a professional, and her mother taught at the Catholic day school all three girls attended.

Now a partner in a travel agency, Sabrina Lall says Mr. Sharma’s life sentence is especially meaningful to her because when the case first went to court, she and her family believed that an event attended by so many people would provide a long list of willing witnesses. “We assumed that this was an open and shut case,” she says.

But they were no strangers to Indian justice and knew the accused and his eight co-accused were connected. “There are two things that work in this situation,” Ms. Lall says. “Money and threats. In this case money worked brilliantly.”

It didn’t work for the Tamarind’s Ms. Ramani and Mr. Mailhot, who had a turbulent time as a result.

But now, Mr. Mailhot writes in his e-mail, “Though we cannot rejoice in the misfortune of the accused, we were vindicated. Bina went from villain to heroine.”

Like the Lalls, he and Ms. Ramani say a shadow has lifted from their lives with the final verdict. “I think the justice system created history,” she says. “I hope it will send a message for the future.”

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A suspicious death is the catalyst behind Indian village’s opposition to auto plant

SONYA FATAH
The Globe and Mail, February 1, 2007

Photo credit: James Kole

Manoranjan Malik and his wife lost their 18-year old daughter, Tapusi Malik, in mid-December.

SINGUR, INDIA — Tapusi Malik left home just before dawn in mid-December to collect firewood. It was her daily chore, but that morning, she didn’t return. Two hours later, a relative saw spirals of smoke from a field in the distance. A small group of villagers went to investigate and found her burning body. She had been raped and strangled, her body set alight.

No one seems to know who killed Ms. Malik, 18. Her mother lies in a state of shock, on a straw bed outside their modest home. But most people in Ms. Malik’s village have their suspicions.

Ms. Malik’s family lives in Singur, 40 kilometres north of Calcutta — the capital of West Bengal. Her father, Manoranjan Malik, who tills a small plot of land that he rents, was vocal in his opposition to a huge auto plant planned for the area, and supports an opposition party, Trinamool Congress, which also opposed the plant.

Villagers here suspect that supporters of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee — the major force behind the plant — were responsible for Ms. Malik’s slaying.

“We think they did it to scare us, to stop us from protesting against the car plant,” one villager said. “We are farmers. We are self-sufficient. This is why we are striking. We don’t want to have to resort to beggary.”

All across India, major conglomerates are on a land-acquisition spree for large infrastructure projects and manufacturing plants. Provincial governments, too, are on the prowl for large plots of land to set up special economic zones.

In the eastern Indian state, Mr. Bhattacharjee, despite his strong Communist Party background, has made it his personal mission to boost his state’s economic profile. But his most sought after partnership with Tata Motors, a division of Tata Group, one of India’s largest industrial corporations, has run into a snag. It’s in Singur, where one of the region’s most effective rebellions is under way.

The conflict is over 400 hectares of land. Mr. Bhattacharjee’s government says it has turned over the land to Tata Motors after gaining the consent of local farmers. But many farmers and the opposition say they were coerced into the deal or simply not told about it.

Over the past few months, Mr. Bhattacharjee has had to confront a series of demonstrations, sit-ins and various forms of protest, including a 21-day hunger strike by Mamata Banerjee, the leader of Trinamool Congress.

Resistance from Singur has placed West Bengal’s chief minister in a precarious position. He is courting a long list of high-profile corporate executives and presenting West Bengal as an ideal location for long-term investment. But a series of agrarian revolts is giving Bhattacharjee party cadres an opportunity to raise their doubts.

Singur is not the only hitch in Mr. Bhattacharjee’s economic plan. Three other places — Nandigram, Sonachura and Tekhali — that have been designated special economic zones have shown that the protesters in Singur are not alone.

Demonstrations in Nandigram led to the death of six people last month and there have been more than 20 strikes across West Bengal since Singur, a heretofore-unknown place, made headlines across the country.

Even in Singur, however, there are two sides to the story. There are those who are against the plant and others who have happily sold their land for handsome amounts.

Lucki Kanta Das sold his family’s 1.2 hectaresfor a handsome three million rupees (about $80,000).

“Industry is a must,” he said. “How many years can we be agriculturalists? Industrialization will make our lives better.”

For Bhalai Ghosh, however, it is the end of life as he knows it. His nephew sold their family land and gave Mr. Ghosh his share of the proceeds: 75,000 rupees ($2,000).

“I didn’t want to do it,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to do now.”

Some say their land has simply been absorbed by Tata Motors. “My father has half an acre of land,” said Mihir Malik. “It’s now part of the Tata plant and no one from Tata has come to speak with us.”

The West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, a government agency, has handled negotiations for land purchase.

The agency is paying landowners 45 per cent more than the value of both fallow and fertile land. WBIDC also offered compensation to farmers who work rented land. The Singur issue has ballooned into an unexpected maelstrom, but Tata Motors still sees it as an opportunity to bring development to rural India.

They built a plant in Jamshedpur in 1945 and one in Pune in 1964.

“The basic objective is that the plant and operation of the plant should be such that the local community . . . is integrated,” said Debasis Ray, a spokesman for Tata Motors. “In Singur also we will follow same practices.”

About 180 people from Singur are already undergoing training courses through WBIDC, and a selective group of 11 are being trained in Tata institutes across India for higher-level positions at the Tata plant.

The Singur plant, which is already under construction, will employ about 2,000 people; Tata executives estimate that service providers will crop up in the area over time, employing 10,000 in all.

“The whole initiative to enhance employability is, in a way, to look at the future of people who are dependent on agricultural plots,” he said.

Not everyone in Singur believes that. But as India’s land grab gets under way the clash between industrialization and agrarian life seems well under way as well.

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