True crime documentaries are excessively moralistic when the protagonist is a woman

The provocative question, “Did you kill your daughter?” directed at Indrani Mukherjee, is met with her sharp retort, “What a stupid question,” revealing a chilling absence of sorrow regarding her daughter’s disappearance. This ends with Indrani’s smile in the trailer of the highly viewed Netflix documentary The Indrani Mukherjee Story: Buried Truth (2024), which unpacks the life of Indrani Mukherjee, co-founder of INX Media, and the mystery surrounding her daughter Sheena Bora’s disappearance.

Other than The Buried Truth, two other recent documentaries– Dancing on the Grave, Curry and Cyanide– among others, explore sensational Indian murder cases with women suspects. They respectively focus on Indrani Mukherjee’s alleged murder of her daughter, Shakera Namazi’s alleged murder by her husband, and Jolly Joseph’s alleged serial killings of family members. While they bring out the chronology of events that led up to these incidents, their narratives also have a running thread, which is quite disturbing – a moral critique of women’s choices and ambitions, often demonising them, and allowing audiences to engage as spectators, judges and the jury of their lives. 

All three documentaries are anchored on how women are often perceived as inadequate as wives and mothers– the roles assigned to them by patriarchal societies. In contrast, male protagonists of true crime documentaries are seldom presented through this lens. In the case of women, although ambition cannot be directly linked to guilt, these documentaries exploit conservative middle-class morality to portray women who come off as different from what they are expected to be as more likely to commit murders. They are not ‘criminal masterminds’ like many male suspects are referred to, but ‘transgressors’ who bear an additional moral burden because of their gender.

‘The family woman who transgressed’

The opening scene of Christo Tommy’s Curry and Cyanide is a woman reporter saying these words on national television: “Many find it hard to believe that a woman, known to be family-oriented, well-respected, and liked could be a cold-blooded killer”. This is to exploit shock value and manipulate the audience’s perceptions by playing into middle-class moral standards and their sentiments around ‘family women’. The murders themselves are not the news here, but that they were murders committed by a middle-class ‘family woman’ is the actual hook into which the narrative is anchored. 

In Curry and Cyanide, a woman journalist notes that Jolly, who hailed from a lower middle-class farmer family in Kerala’s Kattappana, was flamboyant’ and wanted to ‘escape poverty by marrying into a wealthier family. The documentary points to Jolly’s youthful photos— her in jeans, T-shirts, and riding a motorcycle—as ‘evidence’ of her ambition to enter a wealthier social circle or marry a man from a family with significant assets. Moreover, her sister-in-law, who appears for a large part of the documentary, criticises Jolly’s character for wearing high heels. She even goes to blame Jolly for unexpected rains on the day of her wedding as indicative of a bad omen for their family. 

An expert in criminal and legal psychology notes in the documentary that the traditional perceptions of women in Indian society as mothers, sisters, and daughters—roles characterised by nurturing responsibilities– have been disrupted by Jolly’s alleged actions. While men also take on roles as brothers, fathers, and sons, they are not restrained from displaying aggression, ambition, or even being violent towards women. 

Additionally, a senior police official featured in the documentary defends the police’s decision to withdraw their investigation into the series of deaths in the Ponnamattam family, into which Jolly married, arguing that it is inconceivable for the police to doubt that a wife can commit such murders. 

The choice to include these statements in the documentary with no alternative viewpoint highlights how middle-class Brahminical sentiments can influence both judicial proceedings and psychological analysis. It also underlines why Jolly Joseph’s alleged killings 

garnered significant attention in the “progressive” state of Kerala, where it is not uncommon for women to be killed by husbands and even starved to death by in-laws for dowry. 

To grasp the full picture of Jolly’s situation, it is essential to delve deeper into the dynamics within her matrimonial home. In Hindu middle-class families, the ideal wife dedicates all her time and effort to family responsibilities as a housewife. In contrast, Kerala’s Syrian Christian families, like the one Jolly’s husband belonged to, impose additional pressure on daughters-in-law to contribute financially by pursuing ‘respectable’ careers. This pressure to supplement the family income is similar to traditional dowry demands and should not be seen as indicative of progressive attitudes among Syrian Christians. In Jolly’s case, she faked a job for almost a decade and the series does not delve into why.

An activist and author who appeared in the documentary speaks about the stress that Jolly Joseph was perhaps subjected to by her mother-in-law who pressured her to find a job. While Jolly may be a cold-blooded murderer, the documentary’s narrative overlooks the familial violence women face in India. By equating women’s desire to climb the social ladder through marriage with culpability, it further stigmatises women, normalising the idea that if they ‘marry for financial comfort’ they must be indebted to the man for ‘saving’ them.

This narrative is not unique to Jolly’s documentary. In Uraaz Bahl and Shaana Levy’s The Buried Truth, Indrani Mukherjee is also ‘blamed’ for aspiring to elevate her social status through her marriages and being a bad mother.

The ‘bad mother’

Indrani Mukherjee, the protagonist of The Buried Truth, faces accusations of having murdered her daughter, Sheena, allegedly due to Sheena’s romantic involvement with Rahul, Indrani’s current husband’s son from his previous marriage. But like in the case of Curry and Cyanide, this documentary too criticises Indrani’s personal choices through a patriarchal lens. 

Her three consecutive marriages and her controversial claim that Sheena Bora is her sister rather than her biological daughter are used to project Indrani as a neglectful mother who, in her quest to appear younger and more attractive, sets aside her identity as the mother of two teenagers. However, Indrani’s claim that Sheena is her sister is not without explanation. 

She alleges that she was raped by her father at the age of 14 and when she was 16, which ultimately led to her becoming pregnant with his child, Sheena Bora. This raises the complex question of whether Sheena is her daughter or her sister, with both perspectives seemingly holding some truth. Additionally, Indrani has faced criticism for leaving her two children with her own parents while she pursued her life. 

The middle classes, which often idealise family and parental love, tend to overlook the trauma endured by young women like Indrani, who allegedly had to live with their abusers in the same house, in constant terror. The focus of The Buried Truth largely rests on blaming Indrani for leaving her two children with her parents, who according to her, are abusers.  How can a teenager feel that she should prioritise the safety of her children over her own safety and security? Her act of leaving the children behind is criticised simply because she is a mother, expected to be sacrificial. The concept of ‘sacrificial motherhood’ is an imposition of patriarchy and a cultural construct, rather than an inherent biological imperative (Linda & Zerilli, 1992).

In the documentary, Indrani’s son Mikhail, from her first marriage, and her daughter Vidhie, from her current marriage, have expressed dissatisfaction with how they were treated by her. Indrani has openly acknowledged that her feelings towards her children differ from societal expectations. But it also seems that Indrani’s choices were hugely affected by societal pressures.

Mikhail notes that Sheena and he could not address their mother as “mum” because Indrani had to conceal the truth about her children from her previous relationships. But the documentary’s narrative absolves Indrani’s father who is her alleged rapist, her current husband Peter who cannot accept the full truth about his wife’s past, and the extended family members and friends who criticized Indrani for her choices, from guilt. 

While the relationship between Sheena Bora and Rahul, who are step-siblings, is criticised and condemned by society, the rape of Indrani by her father during her teenage years remains hidden. Families that fail to protect women and children from family abuse often harshly judge survivors for their choices that transgress the boundaries of accepted family structures. 

Penalising female desire 

Dancing on the Grave too takes a look at the life and murder of Shakera Namazi, who chose to leave her husband and four daughters for a second marriage with her lover, Shraddhananda.

An interpretation offered by Khaleli’s relatives is that Khaleli’s desire for a male child prompted her decision to enter into a second marriage. This brings a certain legitimacy to her choice because son preference across caste, class, and community lines is culturally justified. This narrative is more acceptable to interpreters and audiences than focusing on Khaleli’s powerful female desire, which threatened the institutions of marriage and family. 

The series fails to explore with objectivity the reason behind the choice of a woman with four ‘beautiful daughters’ (‘beautiful daughter’ is emphasised by a journalist who appears in the documentary) and the wife of a handsome man who was a prominent official in the Indian Foreign Services, to leave her family for someone like Shraddhananda. This decision seems incomprehensible to the makers, and the possibility that Shakera was unfulfilled in terms of desire is never even a plot point in the documentary. 

The intensity of Shakera’s desire, which led her to lose her family, children, and even her place in the burial ground of the Shiya Muslim community to follow her heart’s pursuit, is left unexplored, only to be presented through the narrow lens of why she crosses the boundaries of family and motherhood. 

Similarly, the alleged serial killings in the Ponnamatam family by Jolly, are also completely unexplored through the aspect of her probable desire. Similarly, there was no benefit of doubt for Indrani Mukherjee as well because she married thrice, even though she claims her first marriage at the age of 16 was to merely provide a father’s name for her unborn child. That she left her second marriage for a better alliance with her third husband is something the series uses to substantiate her guilt. There is no investigation into how the men in their lives were, or whether patriarchal institutions like family push women to the edge, enough to commit crimes.

The men in these stories often express their desires in the public sphere without a hint of guilt, irrespective of age. A friend of Sanjeev Khanna (second husband of Indrani) remarks,  “There was something about her, there was something charming about her. Well, something, sexy as you can call it, whether it is her lips or eyes, there was something which draws man’s eyes on to her,” sitting comfortably right beside a woman who simply rolls her eyes. 

According to these documentaries, women should offer themselves, their labour and sexual services in a sacrificial manner as wives, mothers, and daughters without expecting anything in return. Though none of this is to say their crimes must go unpunished if proven in court, the lens through which women are viewed is more skewed compared to the men.

These three documentaries, which must be broader character studies of their protagonists Shakera Namazi, Jolly Joseph, and Indrani Mukherjee, and investigations into the socio-economic layers of crimes, end up demonising these women’s desires and choices. Their narratives prompt a re-evaluation of ambition in women and highlight how societal judgments frequently punish women more for their ‘moral transgressions than their alleged crimes.The provocative question, “Did you kill your daughter?” directed at Indrani Mukherjee, is met with her sharp retort, “What a stupid question,” revealing a chilling absence of sorrow regarding her daughter’s disappearance. This ends with Indrani’s smile in the trailer of the highly viewed Netflix documentary The Indrani Mukherjee Story: Buried Truth (2024), which unpacks the life of Indrani Mukherjee, co-founder of INX Media, and the mystery surrounding her daughter Sheena Bora’s disappearance.

Other than The Buried Truth, two other recent documentaries– Dancing on the Grave, Curry and Cyanide– among others, explore sensational Indian murder cases with women suspects. They respectively focus on Indrani Mukherjee’s alleged murder of her daughter, Shakera Namazi’s alleged murder by her husband, and Jolly Joseph’s alleged serial killings of family members. While they bring out the chronology of events that led up to these incidents, their narratives also have a running thread, which is quite disturbing – a moral critique of women’s choices and ambitions, often demonising them, and allowing audiences to engage as spectators, judges and the jury of their lives. 

All three documentaries are anchored on how women are often perceived as inadequate as wives and mothers– the roles assigned to them by patriarchal societies. In contrast, male protagonists of true crime documentaries are seldom presented through this lens. In the case of women, although ambition cannot be directly linked to guilt, these documentaries exploit conservative middle-class morality to portray women who come off as different from what they are expected to be as more likely to commit murders. They are not ‘criminal masterminds’ like many male suspects are referred to, but ‘transgressors’ who bear an additional moral burden because of their gender.

‘The family woman who transgressed’

The opening scene of Christo Tommy’s Curry and Cyanide is a woman reporter saying these words on national television: “Many find it hard to believe that a woman, known to be family-oriented, well-respected, and liked could be a cold-blooded killer”. This is to exploit shock value and manipulate the audience’s perceptions by playing into middle-class moral standards and their sentiments around ‘family women’. The murders themselves are not the news here, but that they were murders committed by a middle-class ‘family woman’ is the actual hook into which the narrative is anchored. 

In Curry and Cyanide, a woman journalist notes that Jolly, who hailed from a lower middle-class farmer family in Kerala’s Kattappana, was flamboyant’ and wanted to ‘escape poverty by marrying into a wealthier family. The documentary points to Jolly’s youthful photos— her in jeans, T-shirts, and riding a motorcycle—as ‘evidence’ of her ambition to enter a wealthier social circle or marry a man from a family with significant assets. Moreover, her sister-in-law, who appears for a large part of the documentary, criticises Jolly’s character for wearing high heels. She even goes to blame Jolly for unexpected rains on the day of her wedding as indicative of a bad omen for their family. 

An expert in criminal and legal psychology notes in the documentary that the traditional perceptions of women in Indian society as mothers, sisters, and daughters—roles characterised by nurturing responsibilities– have been disrupted by Jolly’s alleged actions. While men also take on roles as brothers, fathers, and sons, they are not restrained from displaying aggression, ambition, or even being violent towards women. 

Additionally, a senior police official featured in the documentary defends the police’s decision to withdraw their investigation into the series of deaths in the Ponnamattam family, into which Jolly married, arguing that it is inconceivable for the police to doubt that a wife can commit such murders. 

The choice to include these statements in the documentary with no alternative viewpoint highlights how middle-class Brahminical sentiments can influence both judicial proceedings and psychological analysis. It also underlines why Jolly Joseph’s alleged killings 

garnered significant attention in the “progressive” state of Kerala, where it is not uncommon for women to be killed by husbands and even starved to death by in-laws for dowry. 

To grasp the full picture of Jolly’s situation, it is essential to delve deeper into the dynamics within her matrimonial home. In Hindu middle-class families, the ideal wife dedicates all her time and effort to family responsibilities as a housewife. In contrast, Kerala’s Syrian Christian families, like the one Jolly’s husband belonged to, impose additional pressure on daughters-in-law to contribute financially by pursuing ‘respectable’ careers. This pressure to supplement the family income is similar to traditional dowry demands and should not be seen as indicative of progressive attitudes among Syrian Christians. In Jolly’s case, she faked a job for almost a decade and the series does not delve into why.

An activist and author who appeared in the documentary speaks about the stress that Jolly Joseph was perhaps subjected to by her mother-in-law who pressured her to find a job. While Jolly may be a cold-blooded murderer, the documentary’s narrative overlooks the familial violence women face in India. By equating women’s desire to climb the social ladder through marriage with culpability, it further stigmatises women, normalising the idea that if they ‘marry for financial comfort’ they must be indebted to the man for ‘saving’ them.

This narrative is not unique to Jolly’s documentary. In Uraaz Bahl and Shaana Levy’s The Buried Truth, Indrani Mukherjee is also ‘blamed’ for aspiring to elevate her social status through her marriages and being a bad mother.

The ‘bad mother’

Indrani Mukherjee, the protagonist of The Buried Truth, faces accusations of having murdered her daughter, Sheena, allegedly due to Sheena’s romantic involvement with Rahul, Indrani’s current husband’s son from his previous marriage. But like in the case of Curry and Cyanide, this documentary too criticises Indrani’s personal choices through a patriarchal lens. 

Her three consecutive marriages and her controversial claim that Sheena Bora is her sister rather than her biological daughter are used to project Indrani as a neglectful mother who, in her quest to appear younger and more attractive, sets aside her identity as the mother of two teenagers. However, Indrani’s claim that Sheena is her sister is not without explanation. 

She alleges that she was raped by her father at the age of 14 and when she was 16, which ultimately led to her becoming pregnant with his child, Sheena Bora. This raises the complex question of whether Sheena is her daughter or her sister, with both perspectives seemingly holding some truth. Additionally, Indrani has faced criticism for leaving her two children with her own parents while she pursued her life. 

The middle classes, which often idealise family and parental love, tend to overlook the trauma endured by young women like Indrani, who allegedly had to live with their abusers in the same house, in constant terror. The focus of The Buried Truth largely rests on blaming Indrani for leaving her two children with her parents, who according to her, are abusers.  How can a teenager feel that she should prioritise the safety of her children over her own safety and security? Her act of leaving the children behind is criticised simply because she is a mother, expected to be sacrificial. The concept of ‘sacrificial motherhood’ is an imposition of patriarchy and a cultural construct, rather than an inherent biological imperative (Linda & Zerilli, 1992).

In the documentary, Indrani’s son Mikhail, from her first marriage, and her daughter Vidhie, from her current marriage, have expressed dissatisfaction with how they were treated by her. Indrani has openly acknowledged that her feelings towards her children differ from societal expectations. But it also seems that Indrani’s choices were hugely affected by societal pressures.

Mikhail notes that Sheena and he could not address their mother as “mum” because Indrani had to conceal the truth about her children from her previous relationships. But the documentary’s narrative absolves Indrani’s father who is her alleged rapist, her current husband Peter who cannot accept the full truth about his wife’s past, and the extended family members and friends who criticized Indrani for her choices, from guilt. 

While the relationship between Sheena Bora and Rahul, who are step-siblings, is criticised and condemned by society, the rape of Indrani by her father during her teenage years remains hidden. Families that fail to protect women and children from family abuse often harshly judge survivors for their choices that transgress the boundaries of accepted family structures. 

Penalising female desire 

Dancing on the Grave too takes a look at the life and murder of Shakera Namazi, who chose to leave her husband and four daughters for a second marriage with her lover, Shraddhananda.

An interpretation offered by Khaleli’s relatives is that Khaleli’s desire for a male child prompted her decision to enter into a second marriage. This brings a certain legitimacy to her choice because son preference across caste, class, and community lines is culturally justified. This narrative is more acceptable to interpreters and audiences than focusing on Khaleli’s powerful female desire, which threatened the institutions of marriage and family. 

The series fails to explore with objectivity the reason behind the choice of a woman with four ‘beautiful daughters’ (‘beautiful daughter’ is emphasised by a journalist who appears in the documentary) and the wife of a handsome man who was a prominent official in the Indian Foreign Services, to leave her family for someone like Shraddhananda. This decision seems incomprehensible to the makers, and the possibility that Shakera was unfulfilled in terms of desire is never even a plot point in the documentary. 

The intensity of Shakera’s desire, which led her to lose her family, children, and even her place in the burial ground of the Shiya Muslim community to follow her heart’s pursuit, is left unexplored, only to be presented through the narrow lens of why she crosses the boundaries of family and motherhood. 

Similarly, the alleged serial killings in the Ponnamatam family by Jolly, are also completely unexplored through the aspect of her probable desire. Similarly, there was no benefit of doubt for Indrani Mukherjee as well because she married thrice, even though she claims her first marriage at the age of 16 was to merely provide a father’s name for her unborn child. That she left her second marriage for a better alliance with her third husband is something the series uses to substantiate her guilt. There is no investigation into how the men in their lives were, or whether patriarchal institutions like family push women to the edge, enough to commit crimes.

The men in these stories often express their desires in the public sphere without a hint of guilt, irrespective of age. A friend of Sanjeev Khanna (second husband of Indrani) remarks,  “There was something about her, there was something charming about her. Well, something, sexy as you can call it, whether it is her lips or eyes, there was something which draws man’s eyes on to her,” sitting comfortably right beside a woman who simply rolls her eyes. 

According to these documentaries, women should offer themselves, their labour and sexual services in a sacrificial manner as wives, mothers, and daughters without expecting anything in return. Though none of this is to say their crimes must go unpunished if proven in court, the lens through which women are viewed is more skewed compared to the men.

These three documentaries, which must be broader character studies of their protagonists Shakera Namazi, Jolly Joseph, and Indrani Mukherjee, and investigations into the socio-economic layers of crimes, end up demonising these women’s desires and choices. Their narratives prompt a re-evaluation of ambition in women and highlight how societal judgments frequently punish women more for their ‘moral transgressions than their alleged crimes.

¹ A Kerala housewife was starved to death by her in laws over dowry in 2019. see acessed on 14th September 2024. 

• Chandler, D (2017). Semiotics: Basics. London: Routledge 

• Linda M. G. Zerilli. (1992). A Process without a Subject: Simone de Beauvoir and Julia Kristeva on Maternity. Signs, 18(1), 111–135.

• Sunder Rajan, R (1993). Real and Imagined Women: gender, culture and postcolonialism, London: Routledge.