Priti Talkies

“She was raped and murdered.” “She was Priyanka Bhotmange.” You have read it right. The name here is Bhotmange and not Mattoo. The latter being one we more easily relate to. But in this witless “Tragedy of Errors” (set a good ten years apart from each other) the protagonists - two girls, different not just in surname, but in the classes they represented, castes they belonged to and places they came from - were joined together by their tragic denouement. Both lives were prematurely snuffed out by egotistical maniacs – a lone stalker in the case of Priyadarshini and a mob of thirty in Priyanka’s case. But while we are all aware of the nitty-gritty of the Mattoo case, the details of the other one still elude us. Today, where we can all find solace in the fact that Priyadarshini has (finally) got justice, primarily due to the tenacity of her very brave family, the contumaciousness of the media and the large scale support of the urban Indian middle class that helped revive the onc