The rich heiress who was buried alive by her husband, in a crime that shocked India

Shakereh Khaleeli was “rich and beautiful” and came from one of the most aristocratic families in the southern state of Karnataka in India. But in 1991, the wealthy heiress disappeared without a trace, as if she had suddenly vanished.

For three years, her second husband, Murali Manohar Mishra -better known as the swami shraddhananda– made up fantastic stories about his whereabouts.

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In 1994, his remains were unearthed after being found under a courtyard of the couple’s luxurious home in the city of Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore). Shakereh had been drugged, placed in a wooden coffin and, as it turned out, buried alive..

In 2003, a court found shraddhananda guilty of murder and sentenced him to death, a sentence that was later upheld by the Supreme Court. The courts recognized that he had gone after Shakere and married her for her wealth and her property worth billions of rupees.

During the appeal process, the Supreme Court called the case “the vile greed of a man combined with the malice of the devil” but commuted his sentence to life imprisonment “without the possibility of reduction.” Last week, the same body refused to consider his request for his release on parole.

The sensational crime that shocked India 30 years ago is the subject of a new web show streaming on the service Amazon Prime Video called “Dancing on the Grave”named for the alleged dance parties that Shraddhananda organized in the courtyard where his wife was buried.

Filmmaker Chandni Ahlawat Dabas of Indian production company Today Originals Production explains that the “what, how and why” surrounding this crime still seems unbelievable.

“Although 30 years have passed, we felt that this was a crime that had to be told because it is still so mysterious, even today,” he adds.

Although the series about the murder, and the murderer, does not answer all the questions, it is nonetheless captivating and has generated a lot of attention in India.

Shraddhananda still denies responsibility for the crime. (BANGALORE NEWS PHOTOS).

“Loving and kind”

The first two episodes of the four-part series explore Shakereh’s life.

She was the granddaughter of Sir Mirza Ismail, a senior statesman who served as dewan (or prime minister) of the principalities of Mysore, Bangalore, Jaipur and Hyderabad, renowned for building several historic buildings and monuments. Shakereh was married to the gallant diplomat Akbar Khaleeli and was the mother of four girls..

Her family members describe her as “a lovely exuberant person” who “liked old cars, very social, very loving and lovable.”

But in the mid-1980s, he met Shraddhananda and his life took a drastic turn.

Imran Qureshi of the BBC Hindi Service, who was working for the BBC at the time.Times of India in Bangalore and featured in the documentary series, says that “the murder shocked people mainly because of the way she was killed, the fact that she was buried alive.”

The crime also “became the topic of conversation because Shakereh had married a man like Shraddhananda after divorcing her first husband,” he notes.

In press clippings of the time, Shraddhananda is described as a dropout from a poor family, a “false guru” and an “errand boy”. that he ingratiated himself with Shakereh by “helping her settle some property matters” and “taking advantage of her illusion of having a child by claiming that he had magical powers.”

The relationship reportedly began to unravel shortly after their 1986 wedding and that the two quarreled frequently, mainly over money matterswhich led to Shraddhananda conspiring to execute his wife in that gruesome manner.

But despite the fact that he was found guilty by a total of eight judges from the trial court, the high court and the Supreme Court of India, his lawyer insists that the evidence against him is, at best, circumstantial. Shraddhananda himself appears in the web series still denying his crime.

Shakereh Khaleeli’s life took a sudden turn after she met Shraddhananda. (FIRST VIDEO).

Platform

Some have questioned the show because it offers a platform for a convicted murderer, but Patrick Graham, a Bombay-based British filmmaker who co-wrote and directed “Dancing on the Grave,” defends the decision to give Shraddhananda’s version as much screen time.

“I think it’s very important that we hear his side of the story, all the more so because we’ve never heard from him in the last 30 years. Plus, he gave us invaluable insights into Shakereh’s personality,” he told the BBC.

Graham explains that with his team they visited the jail because wanted to know how someone like Shakereh could have been influenced by Shraddhananda.

“But we also fell under his influence at the beginning, believing that there were more levels to this story, although none of us had any doubts about his crime by the time we finished talking to him.”

He says they went in “wary of giving the impression that he wanted to intimidate this tiny, frail, elderly man. But as we learned more about the story, and interacted more with him, we realized that he had an agenda, that he was manipulating, that he was weaving a story”.

“The more time we spent with him, the more it became clear to us that his feelings weren’t genuine, and towards the end we tried to have a tougher conversation with him,” says Graham.

And that, he says, resulted in a “rant” by Shraddhananda in which he “insisted that he was innocent and was being treated poorly”.

In most true crime series, the criminal is projected as “a genius,” Graham says.

“But it was very clear that I didn’t want to do that. Naturally, Shraddhananda had certain gifts, one of which was making people believe him,” he adds.

But in the end, he could not make the Indian courts believe that he was innocent.

Source: Elcomercio