Sheena Bora murder case: Three accused in judicial custody until October 5

The accused, Indrani Mukherjea, her former husband Sanjeev Khanna and former driver Shyam Rai, are charged with kidnapping and murdering Bora in April 2012, and burning the body and dumping the remains in a Raigad forest.

Confusion prevailed in the Bandra court Monday afternoon after the judge of the designated remand court for Khar police station was absent, along with that of the next court. The remand was finally presided over by the magistrate of court room 12.

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No fresh applications were filed by lawyers for any of the accused as the in-charge court was called on only to preside over the remand.

Taking a few minutes to examine each accused, the magistrate extended their judicial custody for two more weeks, by which time the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is expected to begin its probe into the case. The state government had, last week, transferred the probe to the central agency following the promotion of Rakesh Maria to the post of Director General, Home Guards.

“The entire conversation lasted for only four to five minutes. The magistrate asked her name and I asked how she was doing,” said Mukherjea’s lawyer, advocate Gunjan Mangala. Khanna’s lawyer, advocate Shreyansh Mithare refused to comment.

The decision to conduct the video-conference was taken following an intimation from the police to different courts about their inability to escort accused to and from jails during Ganesh Chaturthi.

“We intimate all courts a month in advance that during the Ganpati festival, our manpower will be deployed on bandobast duty. So we request them to do maximum remands through video-conference,” said Quaiser Khalid, Additional Commissioner of Police, Local Arms.

‘Samples collected in 2012 had different DNA’

According to forensic experts privy to the investigations in the Sheena Bora murder case, the nail, bone, hair and teeth samples collected by Raigad police in 2012 have different DNA from recent samples confirmed to be that of Sheena Bora. “Over the years, DNA profile may become inconsistent but it can never change entirely. In this case, we found that the current samples of bones have an entirely different DNA structure,” a forensic expert admitted.

The Mumbai police, along with forensic experts, had extracted bones from a spot in Raigad forest recently that were tested at Kalina Forensic laboratory. The femur bone along with skull and limb bones were confirmed to be that of Sheena. “There is no doubt that she is dead and the remains are hers,” the forensic expert said. However, while investigating authorities earlier thought that 2012 samples submitted to JJ hospital, and the recent samples are the same, they have now been proved wrong. “The 2012 samples have a different DNA profile. They belong to a separate identity,” the official confirmed. In 2012, JJ hospital had been unable to test the samples claiming it to be “insufficient material”.

mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com