Death In Mumbai by Meenal Baghel

For people unfamiliar with the case in question: in 2008 a young television executive, Neeraj Grover, was found dead outside Mumbai, India. He was having an affair with an aspiring actress, Maria Susairaj, who was engaged to a Naval officer, Emile Jerome Mathew. Susairaj and Mathew were eventually tried and found to have murdered him and covered it up.

I'm not much of a true crime reader, but I like non fiction. I was expecting it to be very sensationalised and a bit sleazy, but it was actually quite well researched and sensitive to the victims, not gory or voyeuristic. It followed Maria Susairaj, Emile Jerome, and Neeraj Grover himself from their childhoods up to the murder, and for the first two, beyond that to the trial and verdict. It gave me a much better understanding of them all as people.

The author, a journalist with Mumbai Mirror, appears to have spent considerable time talking to the families of everyone affected. She does go off on a long tangent about 3 rather unrelated figures (Ekta Kapoor, Moon Das, and Ram Gopal Verma) and their reactions long after the event, that I did not see the point of. It was the weakest section of the book for me.

Have you heard of this case and read this book? If you have, did your impression of it change after you read Baghel's account of it?