Premeditated… Indrani Mukerjea did recce of burial spot, says police

Police said that the third accused in the probe, Sheena’s stepfather Kolkata resident Sanjeev Khanna, reached Mumbai on April 24, 2012, checked into a hotel near the Mukerjeas’ Worli residence and met the two that evening. Khanna’s counsel Salim Rehman confirmed his presence in Mumbai on April 24, 2012 but said he had come to meet his daughter Vidhie who now lives with Peter and Indrani.

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Officials said that Indrani has told police that Sheena is in the United States. “She maintains she is innocent. Several attempts have been made asking her to furnish documents or proof of Sheena’s existence in a foreign country but she has not provided any,” said an official. “She has distanced herself from the entire crime.”

“We have been able to ascertain the motive behind the murder,” said Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria late tonight.

In his interrogation, police said, Shyam has claimed that Khanna joined Indrani and him on the evening of April 24. They picked up Sheena from Linking Road, near a Jockey showroom next to National College in Bandra. Sheena was not keen to travel with them after she spotted Sanjeev, say officials. “They drove for a while through deserted roads between Khar and Santacruz. A bottle of spiked water was pushed into the hands of Sheena. Once she was unconscious, she was strangled and killed within an hour of being picked up,” said an official.

Shyam is said to have told police that her body was put in the car’s trunk. “The car returned to Worli with its seats adjusted and Indrani sitting in the rear with Sheena’s body in the trunk of the car. The body was in the car and was parked overnight in a garage owned by Peter. The three then set off for Gogade Khurd with the body in the trunk the next morning,” said a police official. Police said they will question Khanna — they have transit custody until September 1 — to get his version of the sequence of events.

Police said they have found evidence of a money trail between Indrani and Sanjeev. “Khanna wasn’t doing well financially and was running a small cable operator service. He recently bought a hotel in Kolkata. He has also purchased an apartment in Howrah. We have established that in both cases, he received financial help from Indrani,” a police official said. Indrani and Sanjeev are said to have had a bitter divorce with the police also looking into a complaint she had lodged against him for harassment.

Police also questioned Indrani and Shyam in the presence of Rahul Mukerjea, the elder son of Peter Mukerjea from his first wife, Shabnam. It is alleged that Rahul and Sheena were dating, a relationship that both Indrani and Peter didn’t approve of. Rahul is said to have dropped off Sheena at the Linking Road location from where Indrani picked her up.

Rahul meanhwile has confirmed he was in a relationship with Sheena and they shared an apartment in Union Park in Khar. Rahul says after dropping Sheena he drove back home in his car. “When Sheena did not return at night and her cell phone was switched off, Rahul along with Sheena’s brother tried lodging a complaint. Indrani is believed to have spoken to the police officials and informed them that she had moved to USA,” a police official said.

Meanwhile, Peter Mukerjea said today that Sheena Bora had informed him — sometime in 2011 — that she was his step-daughter but he had no reason to doubt his wife Indrani’s claim that Sheena was his sister. “She (Sheena) had told me that…Indrani is giving you wrong information, and you please believe me and told that in so many words that I am not her sister, but I am actually her daughter. She told me that,” Mukherjea told Times Now.

He also claimed that the same thing was communicated to him by his son Rahul but he had not believed him as well. “Rahul echoed exactly the same thing what Sheena had said… Obviously they had discussed this clearly between themselves. So when Rahul told me the same thing, I responded to him in exactly the same way…In my situation, I believed my wife, 9 and a half times, 9.9 times out of 10, unless it is proven that she is wrong. She is my wife after all. So there is no question that when somebody comes and gives me a particular information, including my son who for all sorts of reasons may not have been happy about my second marriage,” he added.

Incidentally, on the night that Indrani was arrested, Peter Mukerjea had told The Indian Express: “There was nothing amiss in my wife’s conduct and the two (Indrani and Sheena) shared a very normal relationship like any other siblings.”