Okay, forgive me for babbling a bit here, I just lost a family member and I'm on WS to keep myself occupied and haven't had much sleep... but here goes...
Ravi was not in Harvard when that drug deal went down. He was instrumental in setting it up, though, but had to leave the country perhaps, in 69 and continue from wherever he went (including India, where he was busted).
Now, Ravi's dad was a huge bigwig in India... and internationally, too, here he is on Wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndRikhyear_Jit_Rikhye
Indar Rikhye left the UN in 1969 or '70, my guess being the scandalous behaviour of his son gave him a nudge there... I have to check the timing..
Anyway. Ravi -was- at Harvard when Jane was murdered. He was gallivanting about in aeroplanes (the article hinted it wasn't quite kosher, that stint of his 'long flight', either) and was notorious among his peers for off-kilter behaviour. "One of the wilder characters to pass through Harvard," was how one student put it. Right up there with Leary, perhaps.
Now, I don't have the article in front of me, as I accidentally just closed the damn thing, but there was --another-- massive drug bust a couple years after Ravi's, featuring a few of the exact same people as Ravi's -- only this one was wayyy more massive and convoluted, involved a dozen countries and several ships, and it seemed to me a LOT of dangerous folk were involved in it.
Maybe Ravi had been helping them smuggle drugs for a while before they got nabbed? Maybe the run he was busted for was a test run for the bigger ones to come, who knows...
But he -did- know some awfully big time criminals, and here's his neighbour murdered. Not raped, or anything. Just hit in the face (she had bruises on her face) and then smashed with (maybe) a rock.
And here's Ravi, hearing none of it, but vigilantly noting an idling car outside, into which two men suspiciously ran and took off.
Because.. what. Two men leave a car idling in the street to both get out, run up a fire escape, smack a girl around a bit and cave her head in with a rock, stage the murder scene to look like something archeology-related, perhaps, then run back down the fire escape and make their getaway --- why, exactly?
Almost exactly one year after Jane's death, Ravi's left Harvard and is in India, being nabbed for smuggling tons of hash.
One article calls him a "drug lord" and he was apparently still wanted in 2005, as I mentioned before. Yet he is openly living in Maryland, then, for some reason trying quite specifically to get a job teaching in Catholic schools. Finding Ravi was not hard at all. I did it in what? 10 minutes. But India can't? Anyhow, this is what they said in an article I linked earlier:
Customs prosecutor G S Kanojia said Rikhye, who used to allegedly manage the gang's affairs from Rome and other international hideouts, was once arrested at Palam airport in 1970 but could not be traced thereafter
So there's his shock-horror 1970 arrest that would have severely embarrassed his entire Very Prominent family and that of his preppy American wife.. Pamela, who was married to him back then.
So Ravi was known to be arranging massive drug deals from -- Rome. And other international hideouts. Prior to 1970, which puts him at Harvard and very likely supplying the entire population of Massachusetts with hash during the Summer of Love and beyond.
Robin Hood - your question "did Jane see something.." is somewhat more concrete in my mind, now. And I'm eyeballing Ravi and/or his hardcore druglord pals real hard.
ETA: I meant to add: and there's your reason for the media blackout, perhaps? Was Jane's murder a fly in the ointment for the CIA and FBI (who were hanging around a lot, getting info from Jessie Gill..) if they were watching Ravi in the hope of making a sting?
It all sort of fell together in my mind, just now. Might be nothing. But it might be something.
