A Mumbai court yesterday started the trial in the Sheena Bora murder case by framing charges against her mother Indrani Mukerjea and her two step-fathers – former media tycoon Peter Mukerjea and Kolkata-based businessman Sanjeev Khanna.
The three have been charged with the murder, kidnapping and abetment to murder of the 24-year-old Sheena, a former executive with Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd, on April 24, 2012.
After they were told about the charges, the accused pleaded not guilty and said they were prepared to face trial.
Special Central Bureau of Investigation Court Judge H S Mahajan set the next hearing on February 1.
Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said the minimum punishment in the case was life imprisonment and the next procedure for the prosecution would be to prove its charges against the accused.
The three have been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to murder, criminal conspiracy to murder, kidnapping and causing disappearance of evidence.
Khanna and Indrani have been additionally charged with attempt to murder and criminal conspiracy to kill her son and Sheena’s brother Mikhail Bora after he claimed his drink was spiked the same evening his sister was killed.
Indrani and her ex-husband Khanna were arrested in August 2015 along with her former driver Shyamvar Rai.
Her present husband Peter Mukerjea was arrested three months. The Mukerjea couple and Khanna have remained in police and CBI custody since their arrest.
The CBI said Sheena was killed owing to her relationship with Rahul Mukerjea, the son of Peter Mukerjea from an earlier marriage.
In June 2016, driver Rai turned an approver in return for a pardon by the Special Court.
Later, he is understood to have provided valuable information to the CBI pertaining to the grisly killing of Sheena.
At the time, Indrani had told friends and family that Sheena, who she presented as her younger sister, had moved to the US to study and then work, NDTV network reported.
Peter Mukerjea has said he was not aware that Sheena was his wife’s daughter and not her sister, and has claimed that he had no role in the murder.
Sheena and Mikhail Bora were born to Indrani and her partner, Siddharth Das, in the
late 80s. She left him, placed the children in her parents’ care in Guwahati, and moved to Kolkata and then Mumbai, where she met Peter Mukerjea, the boss of Star India, one of India’s leading private TV networks. Sheena and Mikhail were introduced as her younger siblings.
The Mukerjeas raised substantial funds to create their own network, INX, which they exited two years later amid talk of embezzlement. By the time Sheena Bora moved to Mumbai for college, they were embedded in Mumbai’s party circuit.
According to the CBI, in 2014, Sheena was collected from Mumbai’s busy Linking Road by Indrani for a dinner date that Rahul Mukerjea was aware of. Sheena never returned. Investigators say she was drugged and strangled after getting into her mother’s car, which drove the next day to a forest in Raigad on the outskirts of Mumbai, where Sheena’s corpse was set on fire.
Peter and Indrani Mukerjea: charged with murder
