'Dexter' to 'Drishyam': Murders most foul but don’t always blame cinema, say experts

The moving picture has long had a profound influence on society, sometimes salutary, occasionally sinister. Last week, this grip tightened with murders most foul – including that of a woman allegedly killed by her partner and her body sawed into many pieces.

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” wrote Oscar Wilde in 1889. With 29-year-old Aaftab Poonawala citing American TV series Dexter as his inspiration for allegedly killing his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar and butchering her body, that oft repeated line from 133 years ago seems right on the money.

From Dexter to Drishyam, two crimes played out, one recalling the American TV show and the other a hit Hindi thriller. In Ghaziabad, police unravelled a four-year-old crime with a young woman’s testimony of how her mother killed her father. The body was buried in a cement pit under a house, much like what happened in “Drishyam”.

Research shows that people who are predisposed to violence use films as they tend to have a cathartic effect on them, said Dr Beulah Shekhar, professor of criminology at Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan National Institute of Criminology & Forensic Science.

"That catharsis provides psychological relief to people through the open expression of strong emotions," Shekhar told PTI.

As details of his crime shocked the country, Delhi Police officials quoted a seemingly remorseless Poonawala saying he killed Walkar after a quarrel over marriage and the idea of chopping her body into pieces was inspired by Dexter, centred around a serial killer. He evaded arrest for six months and was arrested last Saturday.

People getting inspired from films to commit a crime and getting away with it is not new, but the gory and still developing story of the murder and meticulous planning by the accused have sent chills down the spine of many.

While the Walkar killing is the most recent, and its aftermath the most horrifying, there have been several instances of the reel inspiring the real.

Film historian S M M Ausaja recalled Parwana, a 1971 psychological thriller film starring Amitabh Bachchan as an infatuated lover-turned-murderer that came under fire for its 'negative' impact on the psyche of the cinemagoer.

In the film, Bachchan's character kills Om Prakash in a running train and this was recreated in real life by a man, he said.

"At the time, that murder was replicated in a similar way after seeing the film. There was a controversy and a lot of people had asked for a ban on the film," he told PTI.

In December 2010, a husband in Dehradun killed his wife and cut her body in more than 70 pieces. Police said he was inspired by the Oscar winning film The Silence of the Lambs that shows Anthony Hopkins as a cannibalistic serial killer.