What is different about the handwriting of emotional blackmailers? Find out

I don’t remember the date, but I distinctly remember that evening in December 2006. A regular busy day in the newsroom at Mumbai Mirror where I worked. Our crime reporter, Danish Khan, walked up to me with a sheet of paper and said: “Here is the suicide story.”

I instantly checked the news list for the day. Danish’s story was not on it. “It [the suicide] happened a few hours ago,” Danish told me.

I read the story. It was about a 25-something girl who had committed suicide by jumping off a multistoried building in South Mumbai. She did not reside there. Her boyfriend lived there with his family. She killed herself because the guy did not reciprocate her romantic overtures.

The girl was from an affluent family and she had just returned from the US after completing her studies. She met the guy when he came to her house as an interior designer. She liked him. Initially, he reciprocated. But later, he pulled out. The news report did not say why. The girl did not like the change. She was not willing to accept his decision and kept on persuading him to reconsider it. But he was adamant.

That day too she had gone to his house with the same request. But he refused to budge. She cried there for some time and then went to the terrace and stood atop a railing. She started screaming out his name. Several people crowded around the building, looking up and asking her to climb down. Police were called. They also tried to persuade her into changing her mind. But she did not listen to anyone. She stayed there for some time. God knows what she was thinking as she stood there. Maybe she did not want to die. But suddenly, she lost balance and…

“Bastard,” I muttered even as I edited the story. “He could have stopped her! Where was that son of a…? What was he doing?”

Nobody in the newsroom was listening to my outburst. I felt bad for the woman. I believed she could have been saved if the guy had not given up on her. I believed he should not have given up on her. I believed he should have made her understand his situation…

Anyway… the report was edited, sent onto the page and it was there in the paper the following morning with a big picture of the building from which she jumped off [Read the report]. When I saw it, I again felt the girl could have been saved. The guy should have made some efforts to do that. I don’t know why I was thinking so much about the incident. I was in no way connected to it.

The story ended there. Like any other suicide story in a newspaper. I did not know how right or wrong I was in my opinion about that guy who I thought could have surely done something to avert the tragedy. About a year later, I discovered that probably there was very little he could have done to stop her. Do you think I met the guy? No, I did not; actually, I faced the same situation which he did. Yes, you heard me.

I can never forget that traumatic evening. Frozen to the last bone, I stood on the road talking over phone to this girl on the terrace of a 15-storey building right in front of me. What was she doing there? She was threatening to jump off. Why? Because she had certain expectations from me which I was unable to fulfil — for anything whatsoever.

“If I don’t get what I want, I will make sure that you fall into trouble. My mobile call records will reveal I was talking to you before I jumped off…” That’s what she kept on telling me over phone even as I shivered like a dry leaf in that windy evening. For about 40 minutes, I was tortured. It was bad. It was worse than death. It was a kind of fear I had never experienced in my life.

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