You’ve got to hand it to Indrani Mukerjea. The HR manager-turned-media executive-turned murder accused has a seemingly endless talent for reinvention, a kind of Renaissance woman for the age of social media.
In her latest multipotentialite persona, Mukerjea is a TEDx speaker, an honoree at college events, a Latin rumba dancer, yoga expert, and an influencer who fraternises with equally high-profile social media mavens. In the last 24 hours alone, her Instagram profile has broadcast a snapshot of what seems like a very hectic – and cosmopolitan – schedule, to her 1.6 million followers. It includes appearances at a gurdwara’s Baisakhi kirtan, a Bharatanatyam class, and a professional photoshoot dressed in an ensemble by a Spanish designer.
In the past one year, Mukerjea has been the dubious protagonist of the Netflix docuseries, The Indrani Mukerjea Story: Buried Truth, and the author of the memoir Unbroken: The Untold Story, published by HarperCollins. The memoir was also turned into an audiobook narrated by the author in her characteristic clipped accent that she rarely allows slip.
It almost makes you forget that she is out on bail, the prime accused in the murder of her daughter, Sheena Bora. Mukerjea occupies each of these personas with as much ease as the Hanumanasanas she is pulling off on the terrace of her Worli sea-facing apartment.
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Projecting normalcy
It was anticipated that after the release of the contested four-part Netflix series about the disappearance and murder of Sheena Bora, Mukerjea would retreat from the public eye. The former INX media head likely agreed to the documentary to tell her side of the story, but it has had the opposite effect. It has been criticised for providing Mukerjea and her legal defence team an unfettered platform to launch deluded theories, and for not asking tough questions. But when the protagonist is so intent on hanging themselves, all that the directors have done is provide her a long enough rope. In turn, Reddit discussions about the show have given rise to some pretty wild theories – but among the show’s ardent followers, there is no contest over who they believe is responsible for the murder.
Mukerjea, on her part, has not only enthusiastically promoted the series, but has also chosen to train the spotlight on herself. This is equal parts flummoxing and fascinating. But then again, you don’t get to the top of the food chain by being a shrinking violet. Mukerjea has built an entire career based on defying people’s expectations.
The implication of Mukerjea in Sheena Bora’s murder has stark parallels with the Amanda Knox case. In 2007, Knox, an American student in Italy, was charged with the murder of her flatmate, Meredith Kercher. The trial went on for several years, before Knox was finally acquitted in 2015.
Both these cases centre on a beautiful female protagonist accused of murder. Knox’s trials were the basis of a 2016 Netflix documentary, Amanda Knox, which also received fairly divisive reviews and was accused of being one-sided. However, the similarities go only so far. Knox has since become a writer and activist for the wrongfully convicted, using her notoriety for advocacy. Of course, she benefits from the objectivity and wisdom that comes with distance from a traumatic event. Last year, she wrote movingly about staring into the abyss during her darkest days in an Italian prison.
Mukerjea, by comparison, is attempting a desperate stab at projecting normalcy. All of her recent appearances paint a picture of a person completely uninterested in societal expectations of shame or retreat. Each post is a new thread in a complex narrative tapestry that she is weaving for herself, either defiant or oblivious to the norms of tragedy and redemption narratives.
But we’re asking the wrong questions. The question should not be why Indrani Mukerjea is jiving to Michael Bublé, but rather why we choose to watch her.
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We are complicit
Right now, Mukerjea exists in an in-between space, as the case is sub judice, and she has the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. She has every right to challenge our notions of penitence and punishment, rehabilitation and remorse. She has the right to perform normalcy. It is not Indrani, but her onlookers – us – who should be concerned with ethical entanglements. We are the ones watching with morbid fascination and unease, unable to look away as if from a trainwreck, at the dissonance between the gravity of her alleged crimes and the levity of her current public demeanour.
Mukerjea’s image is being forged in the crucible of public acceptance. Our clicks, views, and shares… We are every bit as complicit in the creation of this new persona. And in that, we are no different from the crowds that once gathered to watch public executions.
Our engagement with Indrani Mukerjea’s public re-emergence goes well beyond the passive act of watching. It’s intertwined with how our attention shapes broader media ecosystems, which prioritise sensationalism and spectacle over empathetic storytelling. Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor of digital platforms and ethics at the University of Oregon, suggests that the true crime genre tends to commodify suffering, reducing complex human experiences to consumable narratives that are often stripped of nuance.
All of these critiques could be levelled at Buried Truth, but this commodification has not occurred in a vacuum. It is fuelled by audience demand. We watch and seek it out less from a concern about justice for Sheena Bora, but for the gossipy, shareable, memeable thrills of the ongoing drama.
So the question we really should be asking ourselves is: What responsibility do we bear in the public rehabilitation of someone accused of murder? The answer might lie in looking away. I am not sure we have the power to do that.
Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)