Priyadarshini Mattoo Rape Case

The rape and murder case of Priyadarshini Mattoo and its subsequent lengthy trial came into the limelight soon after the Jessica Lal murder case. Priyadarshini Mattoo was a 23-year old law student, living in Delhi. She was found raped and murdered at her New Delhi residence on 23rd January, 1996. The prime accused in this case was Santosh Kumar Singh, Mattoo’s senior in her college. Singh had been harassing and stalking Mattoo, both “in person and over the phone” for about two years prior to killing her in the most gruesome way. It is also said that Mattoo had filed a police complaint against Singh and was provided with a personal security officer, after Mattoo stated in her complaint that Singh was stalking her for quite some days. However,

The case had occurred right after the acquittals in the Jessica Lal murder case, which had sparked off massive wave of public protests in the country and heavy criticisms from the media. In the same way, the acquittal of Santosh Singh had caught the collective attention of the media as well as of the public. This was followed by widespread mass protests and media arose to this occasion. Chaman Lal Matoo, Priyadarshini’s father, was giving frequent interviews to the media, demanding justice for his deceased daughter. Media picked up on the fact that despite so many clinching evidences, Singh had managed to walk out of jail, as a free man, without being proven guilty of a single charge. In the course of a few years after his acquittal, Singh had even got married, fathered a child and had started his career as a lawyer in Delhi. Media used its powerful tool of investigative journalism to find out the lapses in the murder case and very soon it was bringing into the public’s notice, how justice was denied to Priyadarshini Mattoo. This created a massive wave of uproar in the masses who were demanding that the case be reopened. In a similar way like that of the Jessica Lal murder case, media resorted to investigative journalism to unearth hidden facts and evidences in this case. In a previous report by the CBI submitted to the court, it was stated that Virender Prasad, the domestic help in Mattoo’s house was in hiding and was untraceable. Prasad was a prosecution witness and was considered an important witness of this case as he was the one who allowed Singh to enter Mattoo’s residence on the day when the crime was committed. Journalists had traced him to a village in Bihar while sleuths had claimed that he was missing. The apparent absence of Prasad at the time of the trial had been one of the reasons of obstruction of justice. This further created a wave of public outrage