Sheena Bora murder: Probe papers from 2012 were lost in wrong file

With only an entry made in the police station diary, but no case of accidental death recorded by the Pen police or a murder probe instituted, these papers appear to be the only action taken by the police after May 23, 2012.

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The discovery was made after the Raigad Superintendent of Police Suvez Haque dispatched a handful of officers to Pen police station Wednesday morning to look for any official documents that may prove helpful.

Officers scanned through three years worth of police files, spread across half a dozen rooms on two floors, before making the discovery.

The papers were found in a room adjacent to that of police station in-charge, Inspector Ashok Jagdale. That room served as the headquarters of a team that had, since 2011, been probing the alleged siphoning of Rs 758 crore by the Board of Directors of the Pen Urban Co-operative Bank Limited and an auditor of the Reserve Bank of India, which left nearly 2 lakh account holders bereft of their money. “The papers had been left carelessly between bank scam files in a large file rack. They lay there forgotten for three years,” a senior Raigad police official said.

The papers, source added, comprised eight pages filled with a spot and inquest panchnama, statements of four witnesses — including that of Ganesh Dhene, who discovered the skeleton — a post-mortem conducted by Dr Sajnay Thakur of the Primary Health Centre in Pen Taluka’s Kamarli village, as well as letters sent by the Pen police station to Mumbai’s J J Hospital and Kalina Forensic Sciences Laboratory, requesting detailed medical and forensic investigations. When contacted, Dr Thakur confirmed he had conducted the post-mortem of the skeleton in 2012, and that he had handed over the report and the post-mortem notes to the Mumbai Police Friday.

“All that was required was the filing of an FIR. That, and a follow-up with the hospital and FSL,” the source said. Haque has now been ordered by the Maharashtra Director General of Police Sanjeev Dayal to inquire into these lapses and submit a report within seven days.

“I have been ordered to inquire into the conduct of subordinate officers. We will also probe whether the exhumation of the body (in 2012) was videographed,” Haque said at a press conference in Alibaug Saturday.

Suresh Chavan, the then sub-divisional police officer of Pen Division, Suresh Mirage, the then Pen police station inspector, and Sandeep Dhande, who was posted there in 2012 as a sub-inspector, are among the officers under scanner, sources said.

Sources added that a senior IPS official has also been charged with inquiring into the role of Raosaheb D Shinde, the then Raigad superintendent of police who is currently posted in Mumbai as the Additional Commissioner of Police, Central region.

Haque said, “We have found certain documents and given them to the Mumbai Police. An inquiry will be conducted against all policemen who did not register an FIR (in 2012).”

Haque also said that police have started collecting fresh information about all roads in Raigad where unidentified bodies have been discovered in the past two decades.

srinath.rao@expressindia.com