After her return, she could not get her daughter to open the entrance door of the flat. When people gathered and broke the door open, Hetal's dead body was discovered on the floor. During the brief period of the mother's absence, the only person that was seen entering or leaving the building was Dhananjoy Chatterjee, an off-duty security guard. After the dead body was found, Dhananjoy was not seen in the vicinity.
The on-duty security guard and his supervisor told the court that Dhananjoy had entered the victim's flat in order to make a telephone call, and had even spoken to them from the balcony of that particular flat.
Two months after the murder, when Dhananjoy had been captured from his village home, the police had recovered a wrist watch stolen from the crime scene and a shirt with a missing button that had been seized from the crime scene. Post mortem examination had confirmed that the victim had been raped.
Thus, there was much circumstantial evidence against Dhananjoy, and there was no one else who could have possibly committed the crimes within the narrow period of absence of the victim's mother.
It is on the basis of this argument that the courts concluded that Dhananjoy must have committed the crime. Even though Dhananjoy had received the death penalty for the crime of murder, it was the rape that made the crime look particularly ghastly. After collating and studying the post mortem and forensic reports, we were surprised by the lack of evidence of rape.
In response to the police's query about whether the victim had been raped, the autopsy doctor only wrote that she had been subjected to sexual intercourse before her death, as evidenced by fresh tear in the hymen and matted pubic hair, sample of which later revealed the presence of semen.
Yet there is no indication that the intercourse was a violent incident. In fact, most of the injuries were in the face and the neck area, while there was no injury in the breasts or the genitals. Semen and blood were found in the victim's panty and underskirt, but no semen was found in her vaginal swab. These findings indicate that there was a gentle and consensual intercourse followed by ejaculation outside the vagina, and then the partners had dressed up.
Indeed, the victim's partner in sex and her assailant were likely to be different persons altogether. The autopsy doctor did not peruse the forensic findings for which he had himself sent away samples. He opined in court that the victim had been raped, but admitted that this conclusion was based on the police's requisition for the post mortem examination, in which their suspicion of rape was mentioned.
The two 'eye-witnesses' who claimed to have seen Dhananjoy in the balcony of the victim's flat had definitely lied. The spot in the ground floor, from where the on-duty guard claimed to have spoken to Dhananjoy, lies inside the building.
We have verified, after visiting the location, that the third floor balcony is not even visible from that place. Both the witnesses had been employees of the private security agency that had been under pressure to clear their name after the murder happened under their watch.
There were twenty two sets of injuries. No weapon was used. These facts point towards an unplanned murder. The time window of Dhananjoy's entry to the building and his exit, described by the eyewitnesses, was not sufficient for a situation for murder to develop, for him to inflict all those injuries and also to commit the alleged theft of the wrist watch.
The assault on the victim had been brutal indeed. She had been repeatedly scratched and showered with punches and blows before being strangled to death. Her nose and hyoid bone had been broken. Anyone inflicting these injuries would be drenched in sweat.
It is almost impossible for an outsider to get away with unsoiled clothes after committing this crime, without any abnormality in appearance detected by anyone. These issues would not arise if the culprit had been a resident of the flat. A proper investigation of this case cannot exclude the immediate members of the victim's family.
After all, they had alerted the police more than three hours after the murder had been discovered. The police had simply assumed that the victim's mother was not present when the murder took place.
Yet, according to the prosecution witnesses, she had been the only person that was with the victim for most of the afternoon — leaving aside her brief period of absence. She had all the time in the world, as well as the requisite physique, to commit the crime and clean up. The findings of the post mortem examination are more consistent with occurrence of the death before Mrs.
Parekh's departure than after it. This matter has been analysed in detail in the book. Presence of semen in the victim's pubic hair indicates that the sex had happened shortly before her death, as a larger time gap would have increased the chances of the semen being washed off. There is strong indication that Hetal had returned to her apartment at least an hour later than the time claimed by the prosecution.
Contrary to press reports, she was eighteen years of age at that time. If she willingly had physical intimacy with anyone, it was entirely her business. However, her family was a conservative one. How they would have reacted to any knowledge or hint of her activities is a matter of conjecture. In between the claimed time of Hetal's return and her actual return, Dhananjoy had been at security duty in the apartment building where the Parekhs lived.
Thus, the man involved with her had to be someone else. Parekh had acted in haste when she ordered servants to break open the entrance door of her flat. She did not try to contact her daughter through either intercom or telephone. As soon as the body was discovered, she lifted the body all by herself and started off for the hospital. However, after reaching the ground floor by elevator, she remained seated inside the elevator with the body on her lap. Two doctors came and examined Hetal inside the elevator, pronounced her dead, and advised that the police should be alerted.
Yet Mrs. Parekh stayed put inside the elevator until her son returned. Have you ever thought about how you would react if you were put in the same shoes? Mass hysteria has to be curbed. It is high time that society stands together to do something, to understand what kind of wrongs mass hysteria can do.
Owners of media houses have told me that they felt disgraceful about going against Dhananjoy at that time. There were also a lot of rape cases happening and they wanted to make an example of him. Would this incident, its coverage and the trial be treated differently now?
Yes, because we now have social media. But it can also swing both ways. We take our decisions quite hastily these days and we jump to conclusions. I was getting such wonderful compliments and then people said, I am a rapist because I am supporting a rapist.
So this is our society. They are doing to me exactly what they did to Dhananjoy. But somewhere, I still have a lot of faith in the world and I think Dhananjoy would have got justice. That movie reopened the case file and suggested a miscarriage of justice. No, no. My film is a courtroom drama, something that has not happened in Bengali cinema for a long time. I had to debate the topic and the best way was to set it in a courtroom. The debate part is fictional and the rest based on true events?
Based on people we met. Firstly, the story that we all know has been shown. The story that emerged during our research has also been shown. We have placed both stories to the audience in the form of a debate and we are asking the audience to make up its mind. Have you also spoken to lawyers and police officers for your film?
Of course. They encouraged me a lot, right from top police officials and government officials to advocates. You like to bring popular literary characters to the big screen, including Byomkesh Bakshi and Shabor. You seem comfortable with crime and investigative procedures. I am intrigued by the dark side of human nature and psychology — I love to analyse.
But the psychology that goes towards making a criminal is another aspect. One of the dark characters in my film has been a victim of child sexual abuse, which kind of explains his criminal bent. Even if it is fictional, I like to deal with such subjects. A lovely girl who met a very ghastly end.
If Dhananjoy is hanged the pain won't disappear, but there would be some kind of justice," Gillian Rosemary D'Costa Hart, the principal of Welland Gouldsmith School where Hetal was a student, told Frontline.
Dhananjoy is said to have pleaded innocence till the very end. Amake mere phelchhe sab I am innocent. They are all killing me ' as we led him to the gallows," Nata Mullick, who hanged him, told Rediff. Those against capital punishment opposed pleas for his execution. But some believed, and still do, that Dhananjoy was just a poor man who was hanged even before his guilt could be established.
His lawyer's too had argued in court that his conviction was based on circumstantial evidence , and that no DNA testing had been done. They also listed several inconsistencies that the research report found in the investigation.
Asok Kumar Ganguly, a former Supreme Court judge, said that it was often people from the poorer sections who were handed death penalties as they could not afford proper representation. In my view, Dhananjoy Chatterjee is no exception… and in the case, proper police investigation did not take place," he had told The Hindu.
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