Kannada actress Mariah Monica Susairaj was released from jail here on Saturday after being acquitted in the May 2008 killing of television executive Neeraj Grover.
Sporting a printed dress, Susairaj was quickly whisked into a waiting white Honda City car with tinted glasses. An unidentified person was accompanying her in the vehicle. A police van escorted her outside the Byculla Jail compound, raising speculation over the “special” treatment meted out to Susairaj.
Though immediate confirmation was not available, Susairaj is expected to leave for Bengaluru later in the day. Susairaj was sentenced to three years in jail by a Mumbai court on Friday for destroying evidence in the Grover murder case. Her co-accused and fiancé, ex-naval officer Emile Jerome Mathew was sentenced to 10 years jail term after the court found him “guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder”.
The verdict came as a major setback to the police and prosecution which had claimed to have a strong case against both the accused. They now plan to challenge the judgement in the Bombay high court. According to her lawyer, she was set free as she had already completed the sentence as an undertrial and after she deposited a fine of Rs 50,000 on Friday in the court. This, and another fine of Rs 100,000 slapped on Mathew, will be awarded as compensation to Grover’s family members.
Police had made elaborate arrangements for Susairaj’s release from the Byculla Jail shortly after 12 noon. In one of the most gruesome crimes of passion, Mathew stabbed to death Grover after he found him naked in Susairaj’s bedroom early morning of May 7, 2008, at her apartment in Dheeraj Solitaire, in Malad suburb of northwest Mumbai. Meanwhile, family members and friends of Grover flayed the “special treatment” accorded to Susairaj as she was set free.