Sheena Bora murder case: Offered Rahul Mukerjea legal help to file writ petition to trace Sheena but he did not do so: Friend tells court

Indrani, her then husband Peter Mukerjea, who is also Rahul’s father, and Indrani’s former husband, Sanjeev Khanna, are facing trial for the alleged murder of Sheena on April 24, 2012.

Sanjana had said on Thursday that to help Rahul, she had gotten in touch with her cousin, a lawyer, who had told him to file a missing person’s report. She had said Rahul had told her that he had tried to file a complaint but it was not taken.

On Friday, she told the court during cross-examination by Indrani’s lawyer that her cousin is a practising lawyer in the Supreme Court and that he had catergorically advised Rahul to go and file a missing person’s report.

“It is correct to say that Rahul never filed that report. It is correct to say that my cousin offered help to Rahul but he never took it. It is correct to say that Rahul was advised to file writ petiton habeas corpus and my cousin had offered that he will file a writ petition,” Sanjana told the court. A habeas corpus petition is filed to seek a judicial order for law enforcement agencies to produce a person. Rahul—during his deposition in court as a witness in 2022—had said that he had approached three police stations in Mumbai to file a complaint to trace Sheena, but was refused.

He had claimed that when he had asked Indrani and his father, Peter Mukerjea, also an accused in the case about Sheena’s whereabouts, he was told that Sheena has left the country. Sanjana told the court that she had remained in touch with Rahul till the first week of May, and thereafter, had not spoken to him.

Sanjana also told the court that she had visited Sheena’s family home in Guwahati twice—in April and July of 2012—after her disappearance. She said during the second visit, Sheena’s younger brother, Mekhail, had assured her that she is alright somewhere. Between 2013-2015, Sanjana said that she had received a call from Mekhail, who told her that Sheena was in a rehabilitation centre in Pune, where she was lodged without her will, but she had not believed it, suspecting that Mekhail could be lying.