Vishal — cold-case podcast puts victim’s family at the heart of the story

On July 29 1981, the day of the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, scores of families travelled to central London to join the celebrations. One such family were the Mehrotras: Vishambar Mehrotra was a single father and solicitor who decided to take his children, Vishal and Mamta, to his office in Fleet Street, which would give them a view of the royal carriage. After the carriage had passed, they made their way back home to Putney, in south London but, shortly before arriving at their house, took a detour to a local shop from which eight-year-old Vishal asked to walk home by himself. He was never seen again.

In Vishal, a new BBC podcast, Vishal’s half-brother, Suchin Mehrotra, and investigative reporter Colin Campbell attempt to piece together what happened and why no perpetrator has been found. Suchin Mehrotra was born in the 1990s after Vishambar’s remarriage, so he never knew Vishal, but Vishal’s disappearance nonetheless cast a shadow over his childhood. “It was something that would come to define me, and the people around me, for years to come,” he says. Vishambar talks of being a highly sociable man who retreated into himself after his son was taken. Meanwhile, Vishal’s younger sister, Mamta, recalls not understanding the gravity of what was happening when Vishal disappeared and being excited that, in his absence, she would have their bedroom all to herself.

After Suchin’s episodes, Campbell picks up the story, digging deep into what would end up as a murder case when Vishal’s remains were found in a copse in West Sussex eight months after he disappeared. Campbell would never have investigated the story were it not for a tip-off given to him by an ex-police officer regarding a document seemingly linking Vishal to a paedophile ring in Sussex. I won’t reveal the details of the document, or where it leads, though Campbell’s methodical linking of seemingly unconnected pieces of information makes for remarkable listening.

It feels right that Vishal’s family are at the heart of this series. All too often, relatives are an afterthought in podcasts about cold-case murders, their thoughts and feelings presented as secondary to those of the heroic sleuthing journalist. Vishal is simultaneously a story of a family left in limbo, a murder mystery and a vivid portrait of a moment in time.

Perhaps the most memorable testimony comes from a former neighbour of the Mehrotras named Matthew, who was the same age as Vishal and had played with him in the street. He recalls a commemorative mug being given to schoolchildren at the time of the royal wedding, which now stands as a reminder of a time when “the nation was playing at princes and princesses . . . And yet the dark side of that fairytale is something very folk tale-ish: the abduction and murder of a child.”

bbc.co.uk