'Mattoo-Santosh was campus gossip'

(The writer, Arun Anand studied at Campus Law Centre, Delhi University, from 1993 to 1995. He can be contacted at [email protected] )

It was the cold winter of 1994 when many cups of steaming tea at the famous Bunni Lal tea stall in Delhi University's Campus Law Centre (CLC) were gulped down in leisurely gossip sessions that I first heard talk about a tall guy named Santosh Singh trying to woo a Kashmiri girl.

Her first name, Priyadarshini, was not known to any of us; most of us just knew her as Mattoo.

The general buzz was that Santosh and Mattoo had a casual conversation once or twice and the guy took it otherwise. And then the talk was that Santosh had been smitten by her charm.

It often happens in university that friends tease you and pep you and tell you that a particular girl seems to have a soft corner for you. That was what probably happened with Santosh also. I thought he would soon realise that his friends were just trying to pull a fast one on him.

There was often talk about how Santosh's friends had made him believe that Mattoo would respond positively.

Frankly, at that time I never believed that Santosh would be involved in all this. I had hardly seen him talking or mingling with other students in CLC. He was a quiet chap, had a small group of friends. He remained aloof, and at times appeared too quiet.

I just thought, like many others at that time, that Santosh could never seriously believe that he could have an affair with Mattoo. So, at Bunni Lal's tea stall, the general consensus was that this episode was just like other love sagas that ended in the university even before they began.

The story did have an end. But I could never have imagined that what we had casually discussed as just another funny episode would take this tragic turn; and a few years down the line I would as a journalist be writing about Priyadarshini Mattoo as the victim of a horrific rape and murder and Santosh Singh as her stalker and murderer.

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Months passed and it was winter again.

For a few days towards the end of 1995, no one talked about the Santosh-Mattoo episode as we thought it ended peacefully and both must be getting on with their lives. Little did we know the gory end of the saga was just days away.

During those days there were often rumours that Santosh had proposed to Mattoo and she had spurned the proposal and snubbed him. We never knew what the truth was as rumours and gossip flying thick and fast were commonplace in the Campus Law Centre.

Honestly, I never took the information that Santosh had proposed to her as more than a rumour. Actually, no one took it seriously.

The gossip around the Santosh-Mattoo episode continued, but it never really bothered the students much. I used to see Santosh often roaming around in the college campus, I didn't have much of an idea in which year or semester Santosh was studying.

Then I left my law studies to join an afternoon newspaper in Delhi as a trainee reporter. On Jan 23, 1996, a colleague covering the crime beat asked me, "You have studied in CLC, do you now any girl by the name of Priyadarshini Mattoo?"

Even before I could answer the question, he said, "She has been found murdered in her house, I just thought you might have an idea who killed her. My sources have told me they have clues. If you can dig out some information about her past, please do that for me."

I didn't say anything. I didn't believe even at that time that this could happen.