Dancing on the Grave [Patrick Graham]

People of a particular generation based in Bengaluru city (in Southern India) will remember the sensational case of Shakereh Khaleeli, on which this new mini-series is based. Showrunner Patrick Graham, who had previously helmed OTT horror series like Ghoul and Betaal, takes a documentary approach, interspersing contemporary and archival interviews with re-enactments. I'm not usually one for potentially sordid true crime TV series content, but since Dancing on the Grave was only 4 half hour episodes long, it seemed like a decent diversion before starting on something else.

Shakereh Khaleeli (nee Namazie) came of an affluent and prestigious family linked to the Diwan of Mysore. She was married to Akbar Khaleeli, a high-ranking Indian diplomat and bore him 4 daughters. Wherever she accompanied her husband on his tours of diplomatic duty, Shakereh was known as a brilliant socialite, beautiful, witty and sophisticated. But during the late 70's Akbar went alone to Iran as India's Ambassador, it being around the time of the Iranian revolution. It was during this period she met Murli Manohar Mishra aka Swami Shraddhanand (SS). A godman-cum-fixer type, SS inveigled himself into the Khaleeli household by way of helping Shakereh with her business affairs. They set up a construction business in Bengaluru. During this period Shakereh divorced her husband and in 1986, less than a year after, got married to SS. The move led to Shakereh's estrangement from her family and former circle, who were aghast at the idea of this glamorous, sophisticated woman from a high family giving herself to a short stocky plebian who in their minds had undoubtedly snared her with an eye on her property.

Just a few years later, Shakereh seemed to have disappeared. Her daughter Sabah Khaleeli was at the time an in-demand model for ads and fashion shows - I remember being wowed as a kid by a glam cover pic of her in Femina (I am ashamed to say I only remembered the pic, and not the article it was part of). When Sabah, who had rekindled communication with her mum, found a sudden silence at Shakereh's end, she repeatedly enquired with SS, but found that he was fobbing her off with evasive answers about Shakereh being on extended holiday. In the meanwhile, he continued a lavish lifestyle in the Bengaluru home. Sabah went to the police and filed a missing persons complaint. The initial investigation was lackadaisical, frustrating her. Then things then began to slowly move. Almost 3 years after the report of her disappearance, Shakereh's body was uncovered as a skeleton buried in her own backyard and SS was arrested for her murder. He was convicted of the same, and sentenced to be harbored in jail till the end of his life, a term he is still serving.

Apart from covering the investigation, mainly by interviews with the investigating team and the legal authorities that worked the case, as well as journalists, the series does some superficial psycho-analyzing about how a smart social diva like Shakereh could have fallen prey to this ugly conman with dubious charm. Was she that lonely or desperate during Akbar's tenure in Iran? Did SS with his guidance of her business affairs, convince her that he could help her have a greater self-identity than being a diplomat's wife? There is talk about how SS claimed divine powers to grant her a male child, and how it later led to quarrels between them.

Shakereh's direct family (mother Gauhar Taj and daughter Sabah) are only seen in archival (90's) video footage. Some cousins and a nephew were newly interviewed for this series. In an eloquent and politely outraged manner (words like 'dastardly' roll unctuously off the nephew's tongue), they express their dismay at how one of their own was ensnared and brutally done away with by this lowly schemer, and insist that SS has only got the minimum punishment for his heinous crime. During their speeches, it repeatedly came to my mind, where were these family members when Shakereh had been reported missing. Going by Sabah's old interviews it appeared that she was running alone from pillar to post to get the police to take her complaints seriously. They had essentially abandoned her for daring to degrade their social standing with her poor choice in marriage. It is when the series moves on to show the perspective of SS himself that their current participation makes more sense.

Yes, SS is interviewed for this series, while still serving his sentence. In front of the camera, he pleads not guilty for Shakereh's death (his lawyer claims that has always been his stance). According to SS, he found Shakereh dead in her bed one morning when he carried in the tea; his crime , as he sees it, was to go into an immediate panic about how her family and the police would perceive his role in this matter. Instead of even calling in a doctor to ascertain the death, he directly proceeded to bury her body in secret. By any account this is a nonsense story. Shakereh was bundled into a specially constructed box and buried inside a deep pit dug in the yard (ostensibly for a tank). There is reference to evidence of fingernail scratches on the inside of the box, and her fingers tightly curled around the bedsheet she was buried in, indicating that she was likely alive at the time of burial, in a deeply sedated state. Even as he claims to have shared a deep bond of mutual love with Shakereh, there is no corresponding warmth in his eyes. He seems a man ready to try anything to see if it can get him a reprieve.

True, there are discrepancies in the prosecution case, which his lawyer points out. In the video captured at the time SS was led by the police to the crime site after being made to confess, he is seen to pull the keys of the house from his own pocket; they should have been part of sealed evidence when he was called in for questioning. The lawyer points out that is this a break in the chain of evidence, and suggests that the police could have easily used the keys at some previous juncture to plant sedatives in the house. Any criminal, he insists, would have discarded these sedatives in the 3 years after Shakereh's disappearance; it's a fair point. My own view is that although the police did get the right man, they knew the material evidence they had was purely circumstantial and may not be sufficient to obtain a conviction, hence 'bolstered' their case with some planted evidence.

The legal machinery may have also been under a lot of pressure by the family because Shakereh had made a will naming SS as the beneficiary. If he was not unequivocally convicted, he could make a claim for Shakereh's estate over the rest of her family. He had already made money off selling pockets of her land around the house, using the power of attorney she had bestowed on him. Still, there is the question, when so many habitual criminals with multiple murder crimes are given pardons for good behavior? Especially after more than half his life has been spent behind bars, and there is little likelihood of his posing a danger to society now, why is he being held without any hope of compassionate pardon? Surely he cannot, as a convicted criminal, hope to lay claim on the assets for which the crime was committed.

In terms of the making, I would think that the 'series' could instead have been a single 80-90 min documentary. In his groundbreaking Thin Blue Line docu-drama Errol Morris showed that re-enactments of incidents could be a powerful tool. Here, the re-enactments are extended to completely trivial and petty footage, a cheap shot at raising drama. Not the film-makers' fault, but the almost sneery nature of the relatives currently interviewed annoyed me, and I wish they had been questioned more strongly about the family's desertion of Shakereh, which led her to becoming an isolated lamb, easily hunted down by the wolf in disguise. The only place I got a genuine sense of grieving for this brutal crime was in the archival footage of Sabah and Shakereh's mother (former Femina editor Sathya Saran talks about the pain she always saw in Sabah's eyes).

Still, if you're interested in this piece of shocking true crime history, it's only a couple of hours of your time in all. Showing now in India on Amazon Prime.