Gulgee: end of the rainbow

THIS is not just to remember Gulgee, contemporary Pakistan’s most renowned art icon, but to lament his dark death after a life led in resounding colour. This is no seedy tale of substance cocktails, mobsters or even blood – a cold, almost measured mood pervades the entire execution. No maddened axe-wielding maniac broke into the fortress-like environs of the Gulgee museum to wreak bloodshed; it is the sheer bloodlessness of the tragedy that continues to bewilder.

The triple murders of 81-year-old Gulgee, his wife Zarine and their maid Asiya have brought layman as well as the art community together in sheer outrage. On the condition of anonymity, police insiders said that they believe that what so far appears to be the much fabled ‘perfect crime,’ can only be an inside job. Needless to say, the implication of an ‘insider’ being responsible will take the crime from being the most enduring murder story the country has known to a classic Greek tragedy.

On December 19, all three victims were found gagged and apparently suffocated to death in different areas of the house. They had also been hit by blunt objects; Gulgee was found dead in his bedroom, Zarine, with her hands tied, had been hit by an instrument and was on the kitchen floor and the maid was found in the main hall. However, there were no signs of a forced entry and all valuables, including Gulgee’s priceless art collection, were in place.

“I had not been on talking terms with them [Gulgee and Zarine] but with Eid approaching, I wanted to patch up and check on them since there had been no movement in their house for the past three days,” said Amin Gulgee, a son who is unlikely to know his old self again. Faced with a life sentence of abject despair, some contradictions, albeit confusing, are understandable. “It was the bad smell coming from my parents’ home that made me curious and I also made a call to the SHO,” was his later statement. The police, on the other end, maintain that it was a neighbour’s complaint of a stench similar to that of decomposing bodies that alerted them. Police Medical Officer, Abdul Razzak Sheikh, has claimed to have found fingerprints on the neck of each of the murdered persons, with signs of head injuries on Gulgee. Also, the triple murders were between three to five days old as a folded and apparently unread newspaper dated December 14 was found on Gulgee’s bedside table. On December 20, the legendary artist’s car was discovered in the Defence Housing Society’s Khadda Market and on the same day, Amin Gulgee, a renowned sculptor himself, registered an FIR with the Boat Basin police station. Fingerprints found from the car have been sent to the relevant laboratories and reportedly, all items in the car are also untouched.

This has indeed become a glimpse of the lives behind the great glitzy façade of a potentially historic art museum. It is more than alarming to note that an event that should have caused a furore in the metropolis is fast becoming a sad footnote. Three people fell in cold blood and one of them, a legend, will soon be buried in the annals of police station history. Insiders claim that no one has pointed out that when phone calls and door bells go unattended for over a day, it is enough to set off panic alarms. Another mystery is that although Amin’s guard is being interrogated by the police, why was it impossible for the maid’s husband to reach her? He was sent away by the same guard for four consecutive days and finally given the excuse that she had left with the family for Larkana. Secondly, all this while the house, which sees numerous visitors and fans on a daily basis, is said to have been locked from the inside for close to five days and the odour of old bodies was not a cause for concern for gallery attendants, domestic staff, the guards or even the occupants of the annexe. Last but not least, the most intriguing aspect of the tragedy remains the unusual, somewhat eerie absence of greed as all valuables are where they always were.

Many similar mysteries, such as the deaths of the newly-wed NED couple, have been consigned to moth-eaten files due to the poor state of our medico-legal structures and the virtual absence of a forensics department. The impoverished state of our police personnel does not help either as a paid hush-up is always a quick ticket to some material comfort. Nevertheless, if a legend such as Gulgee is buried in grisly silence, society will have more than failed the artist’s marvels and aborted many in the making. Speechless we may be, but the unspoken cannot be allowed to become an escape. Come what may, the force of karma isn’t finished with the perpetrators yet.