Killing puts Delhi smart set on trial

WHEN A man was refused a late-night drink in a Delhi bar 10 days ago, he pulled a gun and fired twice, once into the ceiling and once into the head of the woman behind the bar, killing her.

By the standards of this increasingly lawless town, where five people were murdered in separate incidents in one day recently, it was not much of a murder. But the alleged killer was the son of a former cabinet minister, his victim was a former model, the bar was in Delhi's most stylish new shopping complex, and the murderer smiled his way out under the eyes of dozens of people. Delhi has talked about little else since.

Undemanding distractions are greatly in demand. It helps that government in India is becalmed, with a caretaker government treading water until the next general election produces a result in mid- October. It helps also that the capital is suffering the hottest summer in living memory. But none the less, the Qut'b Collonade murder has delivered a gratifyingly large number of the city's privileged class into the media's clutches.

Almost as delicious as the dramatis personae was the fact that Tamarind Court, the restaurant where the crime took place, apparently has noliquor licence. So the story bounced back on Saturday when Bina Ramani, the owner of the complex, and her Canadian husband and daughter, were arrested on a charge of violating the Excise Act and released on bail.

The crime and its aftermath constitute a sort of fairy-tale of Delhi. This is a city whose only business is politics, where a tiny political elite and their brattish children live lives of conspicuous luxury behind the high walls of opulent, illegally constructed villas. The sullen multitude looks on enviously.

Accused of the crime is Manu Sharma, the 24-year-old son of Venod Sharma, a senior figure in the Congress party and Minister for Food and Civil Supplies in the Congress government of the early Nineties. Something of a tailor-made Delhi villain, Manu Sharma, was said by friends to have long had a fascination with guns.

He attended Mayo College, a private school for the children of Maharajahs set up in British times, then idled through the college where his father was a governor. It was when he was sent to look after the family sugar mill that he began to go to the bad: drinking and smoking and partying hard, and flashing the weapon he always carried.

Named by the police as the prime suspect, he went into hiding but surrendered on Friday when he learnt that his father was in hospital.

The victim, Jessica Lal, was also one of Delhi's beautiful people: a former model from an upper middle-class Christian family, she was about to move to Dubai to take up a good job in a hotel.

But the aspect of the crime that has most fixated local commentators is the location. Qut'b Collonade is a complex of small art galleries and shops and the Tamarind Court restaurant and bar is its focus and it is so elegant and well designed that amid the grunge and mediocrity of Delhi it scarcely seems real. Bina Ramani, its creator and owner, lived for many years in New York, and since coming home she has worked tirelessly to infuse the city with some of the energy and pizzazz of Manhattan.

Her first project was a section of town called Haus Khaz Village, a cluster of shops on the edge of a historic park. She transformed its image and reputation, but pulled out when speculators and hostile bureaucrats broke the spell.

At Qut'b Collonade in the far south of the city she tried again, this time confining herself to a development she could control completely. With Delhi's smart-est restaurant and an array of beautiful shops, it was well on the way to realisation.

Since the murder, the local press has shown as much interest in Bina Ramani's licensing arrangements as in her employee's tragic death. In a city that, as one journalist put it, is "overregulated but underpoliced", practically everything, from electricity provision to house building to driving tests is on the hazy borderline of legality. Ms Ramani's operation was in that respect, it appears, no different from the rest. What was different was that it was ostentatiously beautiful, something this city does not care to forgive.