Nafisa Joseph

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Nafisa Joseph (March 28, 1978 - July 29, 2004) was an Indian model and MTV video jockey. She was the winner of Miss India Universe 1997 and was a semi-finalist in the Miss Universe pageant.

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[edit] Early days

Nafisa Joseph was brought up in the city of Bangalore. She was the younger of two daughters born to father Nirmal Joseph, a Keralite and mother Usha Joseph, a Bengali, who was a descendant of Tagore and first cousin of Sharmila Tagore. Nafisa studied at Bishop Cotton School and St. Joseph's College, both at Bangalore. She was Catholic, but owed her Islamic name to the fact that her paternal grandmother was a Muslim.

[edit] Career

[edit] Modelling

She started modelling at age 12 when her neighbour got her an opportunity to model for a Wearhouse ad. She was groomed as a model by Prasad Bidapa. Nafisa was the youngest participant at the Miss India pageant in 1997, which she won.

[edit] Television

In 1999 she was a judge for the MTV (Music TeleVision) VJ Hunt. A week later she herself was called for a screen test to host a show on MTV . She ran the MTV House Full show for close to five years. She also acted in a television series C.A.T.S, an Indian version of Charlie's Angels for Sony Entertainment Television. In 2004, She hosted a show Style on Star World. She also launched a television programming unit 2's Company with the help of her fiancé, Gautam Khanduja. She edited a magazine called Gurlz.

[edit] Animal Activist

She was a lover of animals and campaigned for Welfare of Stray Dogs (WSD), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and People for Animals (PFA), organizations for animal protection, and wrote a weekly column called Nafisa for Animals in the Bangalore edition of the Times of India .

[edit] Death

Nafisa Joseph committed suicide in her flat in Mumbai in July, 2004 by hanging herself with a pink dupatta from a ceiling fan. She was aged 26 at the time, and was engaged to be married in four weeks' time.

According to her parents, Nafisa took the step because her marriage with businessman Gautam Khanduja was called off. This was due to Nafisa having discovered that Khanduja was still married, although having told her he had been divorced for two years. When confronted, Khanduja refused to answer questions about his marital life or produce divorce papers that he had previously claimed he had filed. Instead, press reports at the time mention that he then threatened her with blackmail, probably after she threatened to confront his wife.[1]

Nafisa's parents filed a police report accusing her fiancé for abetting in her death, claiming that Khanduja had been desperate to get out of the wedding for some time, and sought his custodial interrogation. In November 2005, the trial against Khanduja was stayed by the Bombay High Court until January 2006. The Supreme Court ordered that the case be put on a fast-track court, but as of March 2006, the case is yet to come up for hearing.

Khanduja claimed that there was no evidence to prove that breaking off the engagement had led to Nafisa's suicide. He pointed out that Nafisa's earlier engagements to Sameer Malhotra and Sameer Soni had also broken.

Coincidentally one year after Nafisa's death, her friend and co-star in the television serial C.A.T.S, actress and model Kuljeet Randhawa also committed suicide while in her late 20s. She had met Nafisa's parents days before she hung herself.

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Sandhya Chib		 Miss India Universe
1997		 Succeeded by
Lymaraina D'Souza
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