Writing in Firstpost this morning, Piyasree Dasgupta offered a withering commentary on the media coverage of the Sheena Bora murder case: “This story has stopped being about the murder of Sheena Bora long back. It is now about Indrani Mukerjea – attractive, expensively-dressed, sipping cocktails in exotic locations in most photos accessed by the media. Perhaps a murderer. Were you also thinking gold-digger, social climber, Machiavellian? Bingo.”

Dasgupta’s lament about the nature of the coverage has been echoed by a large number of mediapersons. Barkha Dutt, linking to Dasgupta’s piece on Twitter, wrote: “Brilliant piece on how elitism & sexism combine when Indian media critiques ‘controversial’ women in trouble.”

The Hoot, a media watch website, tut-tutted: “We are experiencing a kind of journalism that has thrown all media ethics, morality and laws to the wind.”

Since the Indrani Mukerjea saga hit the news, there have been two marked directions the coverage has taken. One has been unceasingly prurient, focusing on the many salacious details that have emerged in what remains a supremely complex case. The other – and this has generally come from our media elites – is the relentless taking down of the first category, in a game of one-upmanship as ruthless as that indulged by the first group, but one aimed at proving how ethical and high-minded each of the adherents of this ideology are. Let’s call the second, offence-taking group the smart set for the purposes of this article.

When Vir Sanghvi spoke up about the many layers of intrigue the Mukerjeas had built around INX, he was criticized by the smart set for hitting someone below the belt when she was already down in the dumps. When Shekhar Gupta revealed his cloying meeting with Indrani over ten years ago, critics took him to the cleaners for having kept quiet all this time. Shyamal Majumdar’s article in Business Standard, calling Indrani a “ruthless social climber”, was panned for its non-feminist tone.

First things first: I loathe this growing tendency to throw around “feminism” in any discussion involving women. Can we pause for a minute and ask ourselves what feminism is? Sheena Bora was an adult looking to marry a man of her choice. She had a job with Reliance in Mumbai and had already been engaged to Rahul Mukerjea. We don’t know why she was murdered but one theory doing the rounds is that Indrani did not want her to inherit Peter’s assets which would have transferred to Rahul, Peter’s son from an earlier marriage.

I thought feminism was about looking beyond tired tropes that reduced women to scheming harridans plotting elaborate schemes to ensure that money does not change hands in a way that lowers their position. I was under the impression that feminism entails looking at women as individuals, not appurtenances to men from whom they derive their sustenance, either tangible (means of survival) or intangible (emotional needs). By this yardstick, everything that Indrani seems to have done in this case – and not her criticism – is what comes across as non-feminist.

To maintain discretion in reportage is one thing; to actively censor oneself out of a false pandering to politesse quite another. Are we really expected to watch our words for someone who is – and I am applying all the powers of discretion here – the “likely” murderess of her own daughter and the orchestrator of a number of crimes besides? Someone who arranged for her daughter’s body to be disposed of in the ghastliest fashion and who kept up a façade of normalcy for three years? If this had been a man, there is little doubt that we would have fed him to the dogs. All of us, not just the smart set. Look at how we shamed Sarabjit Singh on social media without knowing the first thing about the truth or otherwise of Jasleen Kaur’s claim. This when Sarabjit’s purported crime had nothing – nothing – on Indrani Mukerjea’s.

Seema Goswami rightly advised on Twitter that “the facts of one murder case” should not “become an indictment of society at large”. Isn’t the converse equally true? That a case as perverse as this ought to break down all pretensions of journalistic objectivity (we know they are pretensions because the Radia tapes and the Essar revelations told us so)? The moment someone comes up with a theory about the case that is in poor taste – maybe this one was sleeping with that one, maybe there was sexual jealousy – the smart set descends on him with an armour chock-full of political correctness of every stripe. This, when the case itself is a putrid, pussy mess.

So: is it perfectly ok for us to be voyeurs feeding like vultures on the rotting carcass of other’s misfortune? No, I am not saying that. What I am saying is that perhaps sensationalism is the only legible response to a crime of such depravity. A crime that systematically breaks down our assumptions about love and criminality and motives will – should? – naturally invite speculation. We want to know the truth because we want to tell ourselves a mother cannot kill her daughter unless something spine-chillingly drastic happened. We hunger for that revelation so we can break free of the relentless cycle of breaking news and return to our lives, safe in the rosy notions that help us survive from one day to the next.

Can anyone truly claim that he or she was satisfied with the two minutes of airtime that Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria gave to the case every night in the first days? Are we not grateful to the “sources” that have been giving journalists scoops on the case, so that we can make sense of a macabre situation? Surely, to nitpick about decorumin the middle of a socially dispersed shock wave is to inhabit a holier-than-thou ivory tower!

Yes, do ask why a Sanghvi or a Gupta did not come up with their revelations earlier. Gupta’s case is still ok since his was only a personal, though highly awkward, meeting with Indrani. But what about Sanghvi who seems to have been systematically humiliated by the Mukerjeas? Why did he keep quiet?

Now consider this. The fact that Indrani reached the pinnacle of success in spite of the string of revelations now coming to light means that even the best among us would be chary of taking on the likes of her. In this country when scamsters of every order reach great positions of power, is it really surprising that people would want to keep their reservations to themselves until the situation for the offending party changes as dramatically and as comprehensively as it has for her? No wonder Sanghvi or Gupta kept quiet. They did not know when they might have to professionally associate with the Mukerjeas again.

This is the real story here: the reality of the media and indeed of our corporate culture today. Bringing this up is not unfeminist, or elitist or any of the other-isms that the smart set bandies about recklessly. To bring this up is to show society a mirror, to expose shoddy truths that are rarely disclosed. Indrani Mukerjea’s story is about the price success in today’s world can exact, and about how keen some of us are to pay that price. No amount of not saying or sugar-coating this will change that fact.