Jessica Lal, an Indian model, was shot and killed in an unlicensed bar in south Delhi during the intervening nights of 29 April and 30 April 1999. The killing sparked outrage in the Indian middle class and spurred the media into donning an activist role. The anger was magnified as it soon became clear that Lal was simply doing her job at the bar when she was killed. Worse, Manu Sharma, the trigger happy young man who shot her, was the son of an influential politician and former minister. For many urban Indians, the incident became a symbol of a political system that was letting them down.
The 34-year-old Jessica Lal was working at a bar in the Tamarind Court restaurant on the night of 29 April. At around 2:00 a.m. on 30 April, Manu Sharma, who was in the bar with his friends Vikas Yadav, Amardeep Singh Gill and Alok Khanna, demanded to be served liquor. Lal refused, as not only had the bar reportedly run out of liquor, it was well past the time to sell it. Angry at being refused even after offering Rs 1,000, Sharma took out a pistol and shot twice, one bullet hitting Lal on the head, reports said. Sharma and his friends left the scene of the crime.
Doctors at Apollo Hospital declared Jessica brought dead.
Describing what she saw on that fateful night in her book Bird in a Banyan Tree—My Story, Tamarind Court owner Bina Ramani wrote years later: “I started up the four steps that led to the restaurant entrance. As I climbed the third step, I heard a pop. It sounded like a balloon bursting but then, after another step, I heard another pop and this time I saw Jessica, who was standing amongst the men, now outside the bar, some fifteen feet away from me, fall to the floor. Immediately, the blue kitchen door beside the counter swung open and a light-skinned, stocky young man burst out into the restaurant from behind the counter, in front of me.”
The “stocky young man” was Manu Sharma.
Twists in the case
In the next three days, the Delhi Police recovered the Tata Safari belonging to Sharma.
Describing the restaurant area a few days after the killing, rediff.com reported:
“[T]he entire Tamarind Court complex wears a deserted look. . . . After the murder, there are few shoppers and all the restaurants have been ordered closed. A lone unarmed watchman stands guard. He works on a 12-hour shift, and his colleague will do the night shift. His colleague was present on the night of the murder, but being alone, the colleague was busy tending to the parking lot. Again, why more security guards were not in place in an area frequented by Delhi’s upper crust, is a moot question.”
Manu Sharma was arrested on 6 May. He surrendered before a court in Chandigarh. Another 10 co-accused, including Vikas Yadav, son of an Uttar Pradesh politician, were arrested. The charge sheets in the case were filed in August 1999. The charges Sharma faced included murder.
Meanwhile, the case attracted a lot of attention in the media. Archana Jahagirdar wrote in the Outlook magazine: “Delhi society was in shock . . . over the death of the well-liked girl-about-town. To be killed over something as petty as a drink not served—who could have seen it coming? Anyone who wasn’t blind or an outsider. The capital’s sophisticated veneer masks a powder keg combination of arrogance, anger, violence—and the apathy and cowardice that helps them function.”
As if a bolt from the blue, in February 2006, a trial court acquitted all nine accused for lack of evidence. The verdict sparked instant outrage.
Malvika Singh, publisher of the monthly journal Seminar, was perhaps speaking on behalf of many Indians when she said (quoted in The New York Times): “It’s a deep, deep fear that it could happen to your children and the politicians are running amok. It’s a public outcry. The courts have failed us. Governance is nonexistent. The law-and-order situation even in the capital city has broken down. A point comes when the citizenry says enough.”
There were protests and candle-light vigils. Even the usually reticent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, without directly naming anyone, chipped in, saying it was time to examine “whether we need new provisions in law so that the justice system is seen to deliver justice”.
The Delhi Police soon filed an appeal in the Delhi High Court.
Media and middle class
In December 2006 Manu Sharma, Vikas Yadav and Amardeep Singh Gill were convicted by the high court while the remaining accused were acquitted. The Delhi High Court announced a life sentence for Sharma. The other two got four-year jail terms.
In April 2010, the Supreme Court upheld Sharma’s life sentence, ruling that his guilt had been “proven beyond doubt”.
The Jessica Lal case brought into focus the role of the media. As Jessica’s sister Sabrina Lal told the DNA: “The media proved to be an extremely powerful force that came to our aid. We are not influential people. We have no great contacts and have no great money either. It was the power of the media that enabled us to get justice. When all doors were shut on our faces, it was the media that came to support us.”
The fight for justice for Jessica Lal was also significant for being one of the first such large-scale protests involving the urban upper middle class. In that sense it foreshadowed the mass protests after the 2012 Delhi gang rape and the large crowds that took to the streets during Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.
As the social commentator Santosh Desai wrote in The Times of India Crest Edition: “Whether it was the Chipko movement or the protests against the Narmada dam, the idea of civil disobedience came from lacking other means of getting an audience for one’s perspective and involved issues of survival of one's way of life. Beginning with the Jessica Lall verdict, we find a change in the profile of the protestors and in the nature of the protest itself. Aided by media, it is the middle class that is leading the charge now.”
Also on this day:
1870 — Dadasaheb Phalke, legendary Indian filmmaker, was born
1944 — Sonal Mansingh, Indian classical dancer, was born
1987 — Rohit Sharma, Indian cricketer, was born
Reference:
- Wikipedia
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