On Instagram, Indrani is kitted out in boxing gloves and still learning to throw a right hook with force. But on papers, she is in form. Her memoir, Unbroken: The untold story , is defense at its most damning. “ The book is my response, not a reaction.” She says. “Which is why I took my time.”

She spares no punches. Unbroken is her side of the story in one of the most sensational murder cases in India. It is block buster of a book, a no-holds-barred account of everything, from her first husband Sanjeev Khanna’s conservatism to the relationship with Peter, her “favourite” husband with his first wife, Shabnam, which became a cause of marital discord and her reason to “testify” in the Karti Chidambram case. “It was something that was on my conscience for a long time.” She writes.

It is a Monday afternoon, and Indrani is back from Kashmir. We are having a zoom interaction, and she sits on a rust leather coach with deep orange cushions. You can see a lift button on the beige background—a hint at the sprawling house she now lives in. Unlike the sheer white earlier, her hair is now completely black. Hair dye is a detail that she is clearly obsessed with. Appearance are important to her.

“I did not have a voice the moment I went to prison, because I was not allowed to speak,” she says. “Every body, including people who did not know me, came out with all claws and dagger. This is a very gentle reminder that I have a voice as well. Just because I kept quiet does not mean I have forgotten. Forgiving is one thing, but I have not forgotten”.

As twisty as an OTT crime show, no other murder case has matched the frenzy of this one, in which media tycoons Peter and Indrani were accused of murdering her daughter, Sheena Bora. The closed match in sensationalism is perhaps the Aarushi Talwar murder case, again one that boiled down to parenting and secrets. If Arushi’s mother Nupur was judged to be not emotional enough, Indrani was too ambitious. “Everyone forgot about the case”, she says. “People started scrutinizing me as a good mother or bad mother or worst mother alive. How could she abandon her children, they said. There is no good mother or bad mother. Every mother raises their children the way she thinks and believes in the right way. In my head, I do not believe I am a bad mother. I have done for all my three kids what is best for them. And I will continue to do that always.” (IPA Service)