Goan Monster:
The new true crime documentary, The Dupatta Killer (on Docubay), bears an uncanny resemblance to Reema Kagti’s Dahaad. Both the fictional and non-fiction shows bring out the misogyny embedded in Indian society. In both, a number of women go missing, and their families do not even file a report with the police, either because of shame or indifference towards the daughter.
In both, the serial killer lures women with promises of marriage, then robs, rapes and kills them. He is able to take advantage of the fact that familial and social judgment causes women to fear being unmarried. They are willing to trust a stranger—one of them after just a single chance meeting—and go off with him, wearing their gold jewellery as instructed by him.
Written and directed by Patrick Graham, with excellent research by crime reporter Mukesh Kumar (in pic), The Dupatta Killer is set in a bucolic part of Goa, where Mahanand Naik, could get away with 16 murders over as many years, perhaps because even the cops cannot imagine such brutality. He strangled the women with their own dupattas and dumped the corpses. The terror he evoked was such that women were afraid to wear dupattas. It is surprising the bodies of the missing women were not recovered till the killer himself took the cops to the spots where he left them.
The format of the documentary is standard by now, interviews with those involved with the cases, reenactments of the crimes and ominous background music.
What is shocking is that Naik was acquitted of most of the crimes and convicted of one murder and a rape, because the survivor finally gathered up the courage to report him. That expectedly went against her, as well as the photograph in which she is looking directly at the camera, which was construed as consent by the ‘learned’ judge of the High Court. Sensitising the law enforcement system is a painfully gradual process.
Graham has interviewed the police officer in charge of the case, NGOs who helped the rape survivor, the mother of one of the victims, and Naik’s neigbours, who are aghast that he might be set free after serving a 14-year-sentence, of the Sentence Review Board deems it fit to release him. Mukesh Kumar gets to interview him in prison, where he is considered a model prisoner, who denies that he committed any of the crimes. Strangely, he is not asked about his detailed confession. Forensic evidence may have been destroyed over a period of time, but was the owner of the shop that bought the stolen jewellery, spared any blame? Another oversight—understandable in this case—is the absence of the wife’s voice. Was she aware of his crimes? What happened to her when he went to prison?
A Catholic priest, believing in the power of reformation had actually stood guarantee for Naik when he was released on parole. As it usually happens, the priest’s sympathy is for the man, not for the rape survivor, whom he allegedly harassed and threatened on the phone, even when incarcerated.
Giving a psychopathic murderer cute names like ‘The Dupatta Killer’ does not reflect well on the sensitivity of the media. Perhaps, between 2009 when Naik was convicted, and today, when social attitudes towards crimes against women have changed. Graham’s documentary gives all sides of the story and leaves it to the viewer to fill in the blanks. The tears of a mother, and the shot of another holding the photograph of her dead daughter are testimony—vague as it is—of the short lives of the women, who were murdered for being foolishly hopeful. Sadly, the killer is still seen as a human being, the women are just statistics in a police ledger.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
