Times of India
Mumbai, May 31: Maria Susairaj, the key accused in the Neeraj Grover murder case, in her confession before the magistrate this week said that she had helped Jerome Mathew in the killing because she was in love with him.
It is the first time Susairaj has openly announced her love for Mathew. Soon after her arrest, Susairaj had told the police that though Mathew had expressed a desire to marry her, she was not keen as she wanted to concentrate on her acting career. Mathew was Susairaj’s sister’s classmate in a Mysore school. In her confession, she however did not mention how and when she had fallen in love with Mathew.
Susairaj had last week expressed her desire to confess before a magistrate. She said that she first met Grover in March this year at the office of Balaji Telefilms. Later she sent him her portfolio for a break in television serials. Soon, Grover shifted to Synergy Adlabs but she continued sending him SMSes about offers in serials.
On March 17, they met informally at a coffee shop in Oshiwara. She has said in the confession that theirs was a complete professional relationship.
Susairaj, however, made no mention in the confession about having had sex with Grover. During interrogation by the police, she had maintained that she had had sex with Grover on the night of May 6. There was also no word in the confession about Grover being found nude in the bedroom.
She also said in the confession that she had hired a painter to paint the wall that had been splattered with blood after the killing. The painter came to the house and painted the wall for which he was paid Rs 2,000.
The rest of the confession basically details the sequence of events beginning with Mathew’s arrival at her flat and ending with the disposal of Grover’s body at Manor.
“After Grover was dead, we jointly decided to dispose the body but it was Emile Mathew who suggested the idea of chopping up Grover’s body into pieces. Then we decided on ways to dispose the body and had sex,’’ she said.
The fact that Susairaj misled the police by filing a missing persons complaint at Malad police station will be additional evidence in the case.
For Malad cops, it was just a routine missing case
Mumbai, May 31: The Malad police’s failure to pin down the culprits in the Neeraj Grover murder case was not so much because of the interfering phone calls from an IPS officer and a politician, but because they looked at the complaint as nothing more than a routine missing case.
Highly-placed sources told TOI that after Kannada actress Maria Susairaj visited the Malad police station to lodge a complaint on May 7, a team of officers even visited her flat at Dheeraj Solitaire building. But the officers did not notice the fresh coat of paint on one of the walls. They did not bother to check Susairaj’s cellphone records nor her cell location on the day of the murder. Later, they got busy with solving mundane crimes at the police station like cellphone thefts and a bomb scare at Inorbit Mall.
“On May 7, Susairaj found hundreds of missed calls on Grover’s phone when she returned home after disposing of his body at Manor. She answered one of the calls, made by Grover’s cousin, and pretended that Grover had left the cellphone behind at her place. She then accompanied Grover’s friends to the Malad police station to lodge a complaint, since he hadn’t returned home,’’ an IPS officer said.
At the police station, she was asked to wait while officers recorded her statement. She was also called back to the police station the following day for further inquiries. During this time, a serving IPS officer, a politician and a former DCP allegedly called up the Malad cops and asked them not to keep Susairaj back at the police station for long since she was herself a complainant. Police believe Susairaj pulled strings amongst her influential friends to get these phone calls made.
But senior officials admit there was a low possibility of the Malad police zeroing in on Susairaj, even if the interfering phone calls hadn’t been received. “The Malad police had no inkling that Grover could have been murdered. They looked at the complaint as a routine missing case. Officers from Malad police station even told mediapersons that Grover had most probably gone out of town on his own and would return soon,’’ an IPS officer said.