Mumbai, July 3 (IANS) A large number of film and television personalities, NGOs and common people joined a candle-light vigil here Sunday evening to express their outrage against the judgement in the 2008 Neeraj Grover murder case.
The vigil, at the Lokhandwala Complex in Andheri, was led by actor Raza Murad, film-maker Ashok Pandit and others.
Nearly 600 people took part in the candle-light protest and demanded justice for Grover’s family members, said Pandit.
Talking to media persons, Murad said that the candle-light vigil was to express sympathy with the victim and his family members who have been denied justice.
Similar candle-light processions shall be organised in Lucknow and Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, the cities from where Grover and his family hailed.
The vigil followed a protest march from Malad (north-west Mumbai), the erstwhile residence of Kannada actress Mariah Monica Susairaj, where Grover was murdered by her fiance, ex-naval officer Jerome Mathew.
The procession then moved towards the Lokhandwala Complex via Juhu.
People in the procession carried placards and banners which proclaimed ‘Justice For Neeraj Grover’, ‘Mariah Is A Killer’ and demanded that justice be done to the Grover family.
Many of the protesters also carried large photographs of Grover, a television executive who was killed in May 2008.
Susairaj, who was convicted for three years on charges of destroying evidence pertaining to the Grover killing, walked out of Byculla Jail Saturday noon as she had already completed the sentence as an under-trial.
Mathew was found guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and sentenced to 10 years in jail; of which he will serve seven in prison as he has already spent 3 years behind bars an under-trial.
The duo was also slapped a fine of Rs.50,000 and Rs.100,000, respectively, which will be given as compensation to the Grover family.
Scores of activists had also protested at a packed media-conference addressed by Susairaj and her lawyer Sharif Sheikh at the Mumbai Press Club Saturday.
The protesters had raised anti-Susairaj slogans and alleged that she was Grover’s ‘murderer’.
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.
