The Malini I Knew

“We really love being here. We love the kind of comfort this city offers us,” says Jasmini Murmu,Malini’s 19-year-old sister. Jasmini has just returned from the local market with a bagful of puja paraphernalia. It’s her sister’s shradh ceremony and she is about to leave in a few hours for her native village,where her parents wait,to complete the rituals. She offers to take you to the room she shared with her sister. A neat room with two single beds,two desks stacked with CAT reading material and Sidney Sheldon novels. There is a small note stuck on the wall facing Malini’s desk. It’s a wish-list. Topping the list is the “IIM tag” and ending it is “a perfect man for me”. We look away as the extent of the tragedy hits us.

Jasmini seems to sense that and asks us to make ourselves comfortable. “Malini was so self-assured and confident. She was also very protective towards me. Once,when I was depressed because my friends forgot my birthday,she actually called them up individually to give them a piece of her mind,” she says. Dominating the mantlepiece of the Murmu drawing room is a framed poster of Malini. It’s a smiling image,with a slogan saying “Justice for Malini”. “We used this for a candlelight march organised last week in Jamshedpur. Hundreds turned up,it was quite overwhelming,” says Jasmini.

When hostel staff broke into Malini’s room on September 19,among the things the police found were scribblings on a white board that seemed to convey the young student’s scorn for her once dear friend — “worst person ever. I hate you” and “revenge is best served when it is cold”. “For us it is a straight case of suicide but because there is a complaint of abetment made by the girl’s father we are trying to gather more information on the process leading to the suicide,” says Bangalore’s deputy commissioner of police (south-east) Dr P S Harsha.

Malini’s family,however,believes that there is some sort of foul play involved. “There are many discrepancies. Unlike in most hanging cases,her tongue was only partially out. Also there were some strange marks on her back which were not accounted for,” says Jasmini. The night before we visited the Murmu household,Malini’s uncle,local JMM leader Ramesh Hansda,told us how Malini’s death has managed to bring to notice things that “people from his community never took into consideration”. “We hail from the Santhal tribe and during times like these,we need to stand up for each other. A few years ago,another Santhal boy committed suicide in Hyderabad,” says Hansda. Malini was among nine Scheduled Tribe girls who made it to IIM-B this year.

On the notice board at the entrance to the students’ hostel at IIM,are small charts with pictures of each of the 382 students who joined the postgraduate program that began in June this year. Under the name of Malini Murmu,the student with the registration number 1111119,someone has made a marking with a pen,probably to identify her from the mass of students — in one of the largest batches ever at IIM-B — as the girl who turned the campus upside down by taking her own life. There is little else here that reveals the turmoil of death. Life is almost back to normal; the pressure of the management course has meant that there is little scope for anyone to linger over the events.

Her father Biswanath Murmu said at her funeral in Jamshedpur that Malini was a sociable girl and not a loner. Her Facebook account with 726 friends is testimony to the fact that she made friends easily. Many of the friends listed were from IIM-B. But in keeping with the nature of social networking on the internet,few it seems really knew her emotionally at all.

“These are large classes and we were barely three months into the course. We have not had a chance to be real friends or understand the complexities of the students. That happens over time when students keep coming back to you. We were friends on Facebook but I did not know her in a real sense,” says Prof Rajeev Gowda MV,who chairs the centre for public policy at IIM-B,who is on Malini’s list of friends on Facebook.

Nearly a dozen Facebook friends or batch-mates of Malini at IIM-B,who were contacted for this story,chose not to speak. Many said they were miffed by the way the death had been projected as a “Facebook love tragedy on the IIM-B campus”. “It’s a bit ghoulish to be wanting to talk about her. It affects a lot of people on the campus. We want to let it be,” said the head of communications for the B-school,adjunct professor N Bringi Dev. Malini made few close friends at IIM,Jasmini ventures.

In Jamshedpur,though,Malini is remembered as the girl marked out for success long ago. “Malini was an average student till about Class V,” says her school biology teacher Sajal Guha. “But after that she showed remarkable improvement. It was as if something possessed her. When she passed her school final exams with flying colours,she came to me acknowledge my contribution. That day I saw in her a confident,resolute girl who knew what she wanted,” says Guha. The fact that she was a Santhal girl did not mark her out. “We have many tribal students in our school. They aren’t given any special treatment. Malini was a good student throughout,” says Bijay Kumar Pandey,vice-principal of Rajendra Vidyalaya,where Malini studied.

Outside the CAT coaching institute that Malini went to in central Jamshedpur,a large hoarding proudly announces the names of their most successful candidates. Third on the list is a grim passport-size photograph of Malini. Malini’s batch-mate Sheetal (name changed on request),now an instructor with the institute,remembers her as a firebrand. “She is nothing like the photograph suggests. She was gregarious but singularly focused. During the mock group discussions that we had,she would literally hijack the sessions,” she says.

Understandably,none of those close to her want to speak about Abhishek Dhan from Ranchi in Jharkhand,whose Facebook status message (“feeling super cool today. Dumped my new ex-girlfriend. Happy independence day”) apparently humiliated Malini enough to take her life. She seemed to have met Dhan during her time as an engineering graduate at the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in Orissa. She wrote once on his Orkut account: “Abhi,u always bring a smile on my face. U always make me happy. U brighten up my day,and the very thought that i can talk to u d next day makes me wait for d morning. I’ m happy. life is a bliss,all coz of u. Each moment with u is a treasure to me. P.S: Girls,u’ve no idea what u’ve missed and now that u know,stop envying me”.

“I won’t say he is to be directly blamed for what has happened. But what he did was wrong. You shouldn’t humiliate someone like this publicly,” says Jasmini. One of Malini’s closest friends,Karan Babu,a colleague of Malini when she worked at Infosys,Mysore,claims that Malini never introduced him to her boyfriend because he was too possessive. “I don’t know much about him. But I can tell you that Malini sincerely loved him. The last time I spoke to her,she was visiting him in Bhatinda. It was right after she returned from Bhatinda that the incident happened,” says Babu.

Friends and family remember Malini as the bright young girl who loved life and music,and dreamt of a “mammoth bank account”,Audis and BMWs,and a “financially independent life”. “These last few days,she seems to have become the girl who committed suicide. But for us,she was much more,and she will stay with us that way,” says Jasmini.

(Attempts to contact Abhishek Dhan on phone,email and social networking sites were unfruitful)