How did the Godrej girls die?

A business analyst’s obsession to find out the truth behind a 19th century tragedy in colonial Bombay has made her one of the most popular mystery writers in the US

Rarely so ever does the pursuit of a single story change the life of its pursuer. Nev March will tell you that such a chase can after all be worth the while. If anything, it will yield a book, and a successful one at that.

March, a Parsi, who was raised in Mumbai, and currently lives in New Jersey, is the author of the award-winning novel, Murder in Old Bombay: A Mystery, which released in the US last year, and is now being published by HarperCollins India. That it is finally going to be available in her home city, where a tragic double death in 1891 became the inspiration for her plot, also means that this pursuit has finally come full circle.  

It was in 2016, when March had moved away from her over two-decade-long career as business analyst and was looking at working with non-profits, that she accidentally happened to read an article in Parsi Khabar about the deaths of Bacha Godrej, the 20-year-old bride of law student, Ardeshir Godrej, who would go on to found what is today known as the Godrej Group, and his 16-year-old sister, Pilloo Kamdin. On the afternoon of April 25, 1891, the two young women had gone to the University of Mumbai, and climbed its 200-odd steps to the Rajabai Clock Tower gallery, only to drop to their deaths. “It was an enormous loss. The incident continues to haunt the Parsi community,” she says over a video call, telling us how growing up, her parents would often mention the “Godrej girls” as if the incident had happened just yesterday. “When two young women die in such a horrendous manner, it leaves a gaping vacuum and many unanswered questions. That really was the trigger for me.”

Nev March

By 2017, having researched and read up everything that was available, March decided to attempt writing a novel, partially based on the event. “I remember writing obsessively for four months straight. But, once that was done, I started to doubt the book. To be honest, I felt like I didn’t have the skill to do it.” At the time of writing the novel, she already had written four manuscripts, all historical fiction, set in different places. “But, I hadn’t gone to writing school. All my degrees were in economics and health policy. So, I decided to teach myself the craft of writing.”

She tells us how she would read novels, breaking them down chapter by chapter, so that she could deconstruct the plot and character. “That’s when I realised that it’s not alchemy, really.” Soon after, March began teaching creative writing at Rutgers-Osher Institute, and simultaneously started revising the text, returning to Mumbai, once too many times for her research—she even sought permission to take the narrow, daunting steps leading up to the tower. When the book was finally completed, March remembers writing over 120 pitches to publishers in the US. “I was rejected one after the other.”

A chance submission of her unpublished manuscript to the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel competition struck gold. Not only did March win the award, becoming the first Indian to do so, she also bagged a publishing contract, releasing her debut in the midst of the pandemic last year. The novel has since been listed as The New York Times Best Mysteries of 2020, and was also nominated for five national awards in 2021, including the prestigious Edgar Award, and the Anthony, Barry, Hammett and Macavity Awards.

The success of the book notwithstanding, March says she was keen on revisiting the event for her novel, because of the many inconsistencies in the case. While it was presumed to be a suicide due to inconclusive evidence, witnesses had seen an altercation between some young men in the hour before the death of the women. This also led to an investigation and arrest. A person named Manek Aslaji was tried for murder, but later acquitted for lack of evidence. His co-conspirators, two Khoja Muslim men, were never found. “If this was a suicide pact, then to my mind for courage, they would have held hands and leapt at the same time. There was a gap of four minutes between the two falls, which indicates something else was going on. To me, it doesn’t lend itself to the suicide theory. Of course, this is all speculative. But, then, there were certain other facts that surfaced. Like, one of the girls had her glasses missing. The glasses were never found at the site of the incident or even at home. The kusti, sacred thread, was also not found on one of the victims. There are so many red herrings in the case, and I eliminated about 75 per cent of them, when writing my novel,” she admits.

She, however, insists that her book is purely fictional; she has only used or built upon certain facts from the original case, to explore what possibly may have happened to the two women at the Rajabai tower. In her book, Bacha and Pilloo belong to the Framji family, and the former’s husband Adi Framji, a character inspired by Ardeshir, confident that this cannot be a suicide, hires a private investigator, Captain Jim Agnihotri—an Anglo-Indian war hero, who has just about recovered from a bloodied-skirmish on the wild northern frontier—to get to the bottom of it all. The Captain channels his idol, Sherlock Holmes, to dig into the complex web involving the suspects. She even envisions her suspect Maneck very differently from what was portrayed in the press—reports hinted he was a rich, young, arrogant man, perhaps even a jilted lover. “There are many different types of victims, and those who are unjustly accused, can also be victims. I wanted my Captain Jim to have empathy for all kinds of victims,” says March, whose next book in the series, Peril at the Exposition, releases in 2022.

March also wanted the book to be a critique on her own community, where inter-religious marriages are discouraged. “This is also a novel about how our social mores control us and prevent us from being our full selves. It dictates whom we can be friends with and include in our sect. It’s a form of racism. This book is a desperate plea to my own community [to take note of this]. I do believe that the people who are promoting this orthodoxy are good, generous and devout. In fact, I love so many of them. But, this thinking often results in hurt, and that’s why I believe, it is flat out wrong.” 

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