Priyadarshini Mattoo’s family relives her brutal death as killer seeks freedom: ‘What signs of reformation has he shown?’

Nearly three decades ago, his sister, Delhi University law student Priyadarshini Mattoo, was killed. She was 25.

The accused was a college senior and an IPS officer’s son, Santosh Kumar Singh. He had been pursuing her relentlessly in the months leading up to her death.

On January 23, 1996, while Priyadarshini was alone at home, Santosh would be seen by a neighbour entering her house in the evening. She would later be found lying under her bed, with a room heater’s cord wrapped around her neck — she had been brutally raped and murdered.

For Hemant, the decades since her killing have been filled with recurring waves of fury. First, when the district court nearly let Santosh walk free, then when the Supreme Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment, and again upon learning that he was lodged in an open prison, afforded freedoms unimaginable to the family he destroyed.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Hemant, who is settled in Canada, says, “I want to know what signs of reformation he has shown. Has he apologised to my family? Has he apologised to his own family? He’s never even approached us. He still maintains his innocence.” His anger mounts as he speaks further. “He’s been getting the mild side of the stick ever since he committed the crime. It’s a joke that the justice system has played with us…”

On July 1, the HC had directed the Sentence Review Board (SRB) to consider the case of Santosh’s premature release afresh. Holding the SRB’s decision to deny Santosh, along with two other prisoners, premature release as suffering from “material procedural and legal infirmities”, the court highlighted several lacunae in the current process undertaken by the board while deciding applications for early release of prisoners. A fresh decision is to be taken within four months.

‘She faced months of harassment’

Hemant vividly remembers that fateful January day. He was in Kuwait at the time when he got a call around 4 pm. It was from a family friend, who broke the news to him.

“The ground seemed to shift under my feet,” he says.

By the time he reached Delhi, almost the entire Kashmiri Pandit community had gathered to pay their condolences. “They first thought the murder was a militant attack. Then they got to know it was a guy who did it, a college student… Nothing like that had ever happened within our community.”

Hemant pauses for a moment before saying, “Well, apart from the exodus.”

It had just been a few years after the Kashmiri Pandits had been forcibly exiled from the valley. The Mattoos had moved from Srinagar to Jammu. After Priyadarshini moved to the Capital to pursue her studies in Law, her father, Chaman Lal Mattoo, took up a job as chairman of a non-profit organisation in Delhi.

However, their parents would soon notice how troubled Priyadarshini was in college. She had caught the eye of Santosh, a senior, and he was determined to woo her.

In February 1995, he followed her on his bike and stopped her car at a traffic light. Priyadarshini responded by lodging a complaint at the R K Puram police station, where he signed an undertaking that he wouldn’t harass her again.

Six months later, in August, Santosh followed her home to Vasant Kunj and tried to break into the house. Priyadarshini went to the police. Again, the police made him sign an undertaking.

By October, Priyadarshini’s parents were aware of the routine harassment she was facing. She and her father approached the Commissioner of Police, seeking protection. She was subsequently assigned a Personal Security Officer (PSO). That same day, she debriefed the Dean of the Faculty of Law about the harassment, who, in turn, called Santosh and requested him to desist.

Furious at her resistance, Santosh would attempt to get her expelled from college by accusing her of pursuing two degrees simultaneously. Priyadarshini had to give a detailed explanation to the authorities, reiterating Santosh’s ploys of harassment.

From then on, his behaviour saw an escalation.

In November, he grabbed hold of her arm in college and refused to let go. This time, Priyadarshini filed a complaint and an FIR was registered at Maurice Nagar police station under IPC Section 354 (assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty).

Santosh was arrested — before being let go on a personal bond, a signed letter promising the police that he’ll appear in court when he is summoned.

By December 1995, Priyadarshini was a nervous wreck.

Hemant, who had come to Delhi for a vacation, recalls that she looked stressed. “… I remember she looked scared and stressed. When I asked her, she brushed it off as exam stress… she never told me anything. Later, when I demanded why I was kept in the dark, my cousins said nobody wanted me to worry…”

By January next year, she was gone.

The post-mortem report noted 19 injuries and three broken ribs.

Santosh had also used his motorcycle helmet to bludgeon her head, a piece of evidence that would become crucial in the High Court case. When the helmet was submitted as evidence, it was damaged — the visor was broken, containing specks of blood. Moreover, Priyadarshini’s PSO and the neighbour who saw Santosh entering the house would note in their testimonies that they had seen the same helmet with him, but undamaged and with a visor.

During Priyadarshini’s last rites, their mother confided in Hemant that they’d approached Santosh’s father. “They had asked him to make his son stop troubling Priya…,” recalls Hemant bitterly.

But his father’s faith in the judiciary was never shaken. “He always believed the right thing would be done. He told me, ‘We’ll do it the right way, we’ll take the legal route’… He sent me back to Kuwait as well because he was scared I’d do something stupid,” Hemant says.

‘She was a tomboy, funny and fearless’

Back in Kuwait, Hemant felt unmoored. “Those days, I walked around like there was no life in me… She was eight years younger, she was my baby sister,” he says.

He recalls Priyadarshini as a funny, gregarious, fearless and tomboyish girl. “She was an incredible prankster. She would do this thing back when we were in Srinagar. When someone would come to visit our house, she’d tell them that their scooter was in the way and a neighbour had asked us to move it; could she have the keys? She’d then take the vehicle for a joy ride,” Hemant laughs.

“You could never be sad around her; she was always brimming with jokes. She was good at mimicry too — she only had to listen to someone talk once… Back then, she’d pick fights over politics with the boys in Nawabazaar. We used to say, ‘We need to find a girl for this girl’ because she was so tomboyish…,” he says.

If Priyadarshini were still here, Hemant says, she’d probably have moved to the States or Canada after her studies.

“After we left Kashmir, we felt out of place everywhere. We were always looking for a place to settle down and put down our roots. He (Santosh) really took what little we had left,” says Hemant.