Sheena Bora case: Peter Mukerjea charged with murder and conspiracy, sent to CBI custody

The Sheena Bora murder case took a murkier turn on Friday when media baron Peter Mukerjea was charged with murder. He has been sent to CBI custody till 23 November.

The CBI, which filed its chargesheet on Thursday, sought 14-day custody on Mukerjea telling a Mumbai court that he was involved in the conspiracy with his wife and one of the accused, Indrani.

Hours after the chargesheet was lodged, the CBI on Thursday evening arrested Peter Mukerjea who is now the fourth accused in the case. The agency also told the court that Peter was in continuous conversation with Indrani prior, during and after the incident.

The accused are Indrani’s ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna and her former driver Shyamvar Rai. Meanwhile, a Mumbai magistrate has extended the judicial custody of the three prime accused in the Sheena Bora murder case till 3 December.

Simultaneously, the murder case has now been committed to a Special CBI Court which will hear the matter from next month.

According to official sources, the chargesheet says that Sheena Bora was murdered in 2012 by her mother Indrani, while Khanna and Rai are the accomplices in the crime.

Earlier, the case was being investigated by the Mumbai police. But in mid-September, the Maharashtra government handed it over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which has been probing it since.

According to investigators, Sheena Bora, 24, an employee with a private company in Mumbai, was allegedly strangled in a car on the night of 24 April, 2012.

Her body was taken in the vehicle to an isolated spot in the forests near Gagode village in adjacent Raigad district, around 80 kms south of Mumbai. They poured petrol over it and set it afire and dumped her half-burnt body in the thick bushes from where it was found on 23 May, a month later by a local villager.

Subsequently, forensic and other tests have confirmed that the remains found in the forests belong to Sheena Bora.

With agency inputs