The Mumbai Police today arrested M.L. Jerome (25), a lieutenant in the Navy, from the Cochin base and brought him to Mumbai in connection with the murder of a television executive last week. The police said Jerome stabbed Neeraj Grover (25), creative head of television production house Synergy Adlabs, at the suburban residence of television actress Maria Monica Susairaj (27), before chopping his body into little pieces. The chopped body parts of Grover were then taken to a forest on the outskirts of Mumbai and burnt with petrol. The police said Jerome was arrested by the naval police yesterday itself shortly after Susairaj confessed to the murder and brutal hacking of the victim’s remains.
According to the police, Maria and Jerome were childhood sweethearts before the former took up an acting career. In Mumbai to seek work, Maria came into contact with the victim while they were working together in a television serial, it said.
On the fateful day earlier this month, Grover was to spend the night at Maria’s residence when Jerome telephoned her from the naval base in Cochin. On hearing Grover’s voice in the background, Jerome grew suspicious and decided to leave for Mumbai immediately by a night flight. On arriving at Maria’s residence, Jerome spotted Grover and flew into a rage. After an argument, Jerome stabbed Grover to death with a kitchen knife.
Maria and Jerome then decided to dispose of Grover’s body. The police says it took the couple more than nine hours to chop the body into little pieces, pack it into two bags and transport the remains to Manor, a forest area in Mumbai’s outskirts, where the bags were burnt. In between Maria went shopping at a suburban mall for curtains and bedsheets to wrap the remains in, the police said.
After disposing of the remains, she then filed a missing person complaint saying Grover left her residence immediately after arriving and was not traceable.
The police, however, questioned Maria thoroughly as she was the last person to meet with Grover. After sustained questioning, she confessed to the crime on Tuesday night a week after the murder, the police said.
According to police officials, the key evidence provided by the watchman of the building Maria lived in proved to be her undoing. He told the police that he had seen Jerome and Monica leave together with heavy bags in a car. The police said it had recovered the half-burnt remains of Grover’s body from the spot where they were dumped. The victim’s parents identified the remains from the silver chain and clothes worn by him, the police said.