Lasting Rose

At least half of India in fact is sleepless over three stories involving beautiful and successful women and powerful ministers. So if you are of a romantic kind and death is not something you like to think very much about, please don't read further, unless you want to lose some sleep.
Though the Olympics and the Wisconsin Gurudwara shooting dominated the world media, the Indian Media is abuzz with three intriguing and unsettling stories of tragedy involving, money, power and love which tragically took the lives of three beautiful, young ladies.
It is indeed very unsettling that all three have been found dead in apparent situations of suicide, yet leaving enough room for being cases of suspicious death which makes you sad but annoyingly inquisitive too. What is really unsettling is the fact that all three were highly educated with very promising careers making one on wonder what exactly in their private lives lead them to such horrible plight.
Interestingly, the social web, with its army of active participants who discuss everything and anything threadbare that appear in the media with immense imagination, make the stories much more intriguing. Very often, as in the case of these stories with very little factual information in the media and in public domain, such discussions end up in character assassination of the diseased, without any chance for the poor souls to defend themselves.

Looking at the number of comments posted on this article, I come to realise that India has a huge pool of talented writers who can create so many different reasons and scenarios for a case which neither our forensic experts nor our police department can envision or solve!!!!

Neelima, a twenty-seven year old software engineer and lead, employed by the IT major INFOSYS at a site in Tampa, USA, was on holidays in India for three weeks. For mysterious reasons, she walked one night in to the high security campus of her employer in Hyderabad, where she used to work before, and jumped off from the tenth storey car park to her tragic death.
This is how some one among her tribe of Indian techies which dominate the comment threads on Indian News sites with all sorts of bizarre explanations, opinions and comments summarise the story.

The news is already all over Telugu channels: 1.Reason to come to Infosys campus was to email and call boyfriend from quiet place. 2. Reason to come so late in the night is because of time difference between India and USA. 3. Boyfriend is P.B. from Cognizant in Tampa, Florida. 4. She was more eager than boyfriend. Boyfriend did not want to marry as he was getting free milk, so why buy the cow? 5. After boyfriend said clear no, she wrote to him saying hope we will be together in next Janma and killed herself.

In another tragic story, Fiza, a beautiful 39 year old lawyer and wife of an ex state minister, whose love affair and marriage became headline story in the Indian media a few years back, was found dead in a decomposed state in her own bed, apparently after several days after she died.
The love component of this story is so unbelievably strong. Fiza, and her husband Chandra Mohan the son of a powerful chief minister of the state of Haryana who was already married, both born Hindus, converted to Islam so that he could legally live with a second wife.
That was before the minister, who couldn't stand the separation from his first wife, went back to her leaving Fiza a Muslim and now dead. There is no clarity, in an ongoing investigation if Fiza was murdered.
In yet another ongoing story involving another Haryana minister Kanda and another beautiful young lady who recently committed suicide, Geetika, an airhostess has accused her lover of harassment in her suicide note.
What is really intriguing and makes you lose your sleep, just in case you are stoic for some reason and not emotionally disturbed by the tragedy of it all, is the question how well educated career women could end their lives like this.
In all three cases, it is mind boggling as to why the women couldn't stand up to the situations and seek appropriate help which is surely available in modern India.
The incidents are covered in mystery and ambiguity as there were no suicide notes found and made public at least in two cases. In the case of air hostess Geetika, it is the suicide note itself which is the bone of contention, as she has allegedly received material help from her lover in her education and career when she was alive, making her allegations of harassment questionable.
In any case it is the shoddy and unprofessional police work in India, with poor knowledge of the importance of collecting, preserving and using forensic evidence, which make these cases more mysterious than they actually are.