Knotty Murder Mysteries of India

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“Crime has a short lifespan”, says who? With 672 district courts, 25 high courts and a supreme court with more than 20 lakh lawyers, India is yet to understand the deeper meaning of the line given above. While I absolutely respect the judiciary of our country, there still comes some instances which makes me think on the complexity of the case that has left them pending and unsolved for years. Here are a few such unsolved crimes mysteries that still freaks me out.

Arushi & Hemraj Murder Mystery

Well this had to top my list. To be honest, this is probably the most complicated and unexpected murder mystery I have known about. While all other cases I would be mentioning have celebrities or politicians and some really influential people involved which therefore might make things difficult to investigate (for numerous reasons that I wouldn’t like to mention). But this case is a different story all together. The world on 16^th May 2008, woke up to the news of the murder of a 14-year-old girl in her room while the parents were fast asleep in the room next to her. What initially was thought to be an act of the house help who was missing even since the news broke, changed the track completely when his body was found on the terrace of the very same building. A blood strained hand print on the wall, 3 empty alcohol glasses in the servant’s room and the parents being present in the same house at the time of the murders, yet the case, till date, remains unsolved. While the court initially declared the parents guilty of the murder, later released them on an immediate basis, based on no solid evidence against them. While this murder mystery gained a lot of public and media attention, it still is far from being solved. 

Sunanda Pushkar

Member of Parliament, a writer and former international diplomat, Shashi Tharoor’s life has been a roller coaster ride. And what added a lot more drama to it was the mysterious death of his third wife, a business woman and a well-known name Ms. Sunanda Pushkar. Landed a day before, Sunanda and Shashi Tharoor had checked in to The Leela Palace, New Delhi as their home was under construction. While Tharoor was away attending AICC session, he only returned to the hotel to find Sunanda’s body lying in bed at around 8:45- 9 pm on January 17, 2014. While the postmortem reports suggested the cause of the death to be unnatural, the stories of she consuming sleeping pills or having a drug overdose are endless. The sudden new of death also came as a shock for many as it happened just a day after she had a spat on Twitter with a Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar where Pushkar had accused her for stalking Shashi Tharoor and being an ISI agent. Whatever the case may be, the mystery of her death is far from being solved.

Sridevi Ji

It isn’t uncommon in Bollywood to encounter mysterious deaths, murders and suicides. But the news that came across on 24^th February 2018, shook the entire nation. The sudden demise of a superstar in a bath tub wasn’t very easy for people to digest. While the autopsy suggested the cause of the death to be of accidental drowning under the influence of alcohol, there are many people who still think it to be a murder and not an accident. If only Sriji could have told us the actual truth. 

Lal Bahadur Shastri

The death of one of India’s icons and our former Prime Minister, Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri, has been questionable for years now. Shastri Ji was in Uzbekistan, when an alleged heart-attack in the wee hours of 11^th January 1966 took away his life. While different people have different stories to tell, Shastri Ji’s family still believe it to be a case of murder as see a chance of him being poisoned. Murder or natural, not sure of that but the demise of the Prime Minister of a country in a foreign land does seem genuine to raise a few questions in the minds of people; doesn’t it?