Five controversial murders that shocked India before Indrani Mukerjea's arrest

In a crazy plot that is bound to confound you, more than three years after Mumbai resident Sheena Bora went missing, Indrani Mukerjea, the wife of former Star TV CEO Peter Mukherjea, has been arrested by the city police for homicide. Although initial reports had said that Sheena was Indrani’s sister, subsequent reports say that Sheena is actually her daughter. Indrani has reportedly confessed to police that Sheena Bora was her daughter. Times Now also spoke to Mikhail Bora, Sheena’s brother, who confirmed the fact that Indrani was their mother. The duo was brought up by their maternal grandparents. Indrani (43) was arrested on Tuesday from her home in Mumbai, after her driver confessed that he killed Sheena following his employer’s orders. Here are some of the other murder cases that have shocked India. Sandhya Pandit case

Sandhya (50) had gone missing since 13 December 2012, when she went to a bank in Nerul carrying jewellery worth around Rs 20 lakh with her, police said. Two days later, her son Raghuveer Singh registered a missing person’s complaint with the NRI police station in Navi Mumbai. In January 2013, skull and bones were found at a patch of marshy land near an elite Nerul school. A forensic report on these skeletal remains stated that these belonged to Sandhya, after which the Navi Mumbai police registered a case of murder. The forensic report received indicated that injuries were inflicted on Sandhya before her death, police said. “This means, her murderers injured her skull and she bled before being dumped near the school,” the officer had told  _PTI_. “One more forensic report has been received by us and it suggests that injuries on Singh were ante-mortem,” a Mumbai police crime branch official probing the high profile case had told PTI. The police had later concluded that Raghuveer alias Bhola was the prime suspect in his mother’s gruesome murder. Raghuveer,  according to The Times of India, was a drug addict and used to steal money from home to fund his habit. People in the neighbourhood, including two maids, had told the police that Raghuveer was a drug addict who often fought with his mother over money. Raghuveer was arrested on 16 December 2013 for allegedly murdering his mother Sandhya by strangling her and cutting her body into pieces. Her remains had been then disposed off in a marshy area in Navi Mumbai. However in May this year, the Bombay High Court granted bail to Raghuveer after the court ruled that there was no “clinching” evidence against him. The judge had also observed that the prosecution’s case against him was based entirely on circumstantial evidence which was not sufficient,  according to a DNA report. Arushi Talwar - Hemraj murder case

Dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were in 2013 convicted for the killing of their daughter Aarushi and domestic Hemraj at their residence in Noida in 2008. On 16 May, Aarushi Talwar was found dead with her throat slit in the bedroom of her Noida home. Domestic help Hemraj, a Nepali, was suspected of murder initially. However, in a dramatic turn of events, the next day, Hemraj’s body was found on the terrace of the Talwar residence. Police had suspected this was an inside job as the murders were done with surgical precision. The Talwar’s former Nepali domestic help Vishnu Sharma had also been named as suspect. But the police continued to suspect the family and began to look into the honour killing angle. The police had also quizzed Aarushi’s close friend whom she spoke to 688 times in the 45 days preceding her murder. As the investigations progressed, Aarushi’s father Rajesh Talwar was arrested for the twin murders on 23 May 2013 . Rajesh Talwar had reportedly registered a wrong FIR against domestic help Hemraj, despite knowing about his death with an aim to mislead the investigators, the CBI had claimed. According to the CBI, Rajesh had lodged a complaint at Noida’s Sector 20 police station at 7.10 am on 16 May 2008, stating that he, his wife Nupur and 14-year-old daughter Aarushi resided at his house while Hemraj who also “lived” there and fled away after murdering his daughter. The dentist couple were sentenced to life term by a CBI court in 2013 after they were convicted of killing their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj five-and-a-half years ago. Read all the twists and turns of the case here. Laila Khan case

Laila Khan, a Pakistan born actress, best known for her role opposite Rajesh Khanna in the 2008 Bollywood movie Wafa: A Deadly Love Story was killed along with her family in a forested area around 150 km out of Mumbai in 2012. Later, police found that besides Laila, six other family members, including her mother Shelina Patel, elder sister Hazmina, twin siblings Zara and Imran, stepfather Asif Sheikh and family friend Parvez Iqbal Tak went missing too. On 3 July, Nadir Patel, the biological father of Laila Khan, registered a case of kidnapping at the Oshiwara police station,  reports DNA. Laila Khan’s stepfather Parvez Tak confessed to killing her and her siblings, the Mumbai Police had claimed in 2012. Tak had reportedly told the police that he killed Laila’s mother, Celina, in a fit of rage and then killed the others as they had witnessed the murder. Six bodies had been found carefully buried in a pit at the farmhouse owned by Laila in Igatpuri near Mumbai. Detailing the find, the Mumbai police had  told NDTV , “three bodies were placed at the bottom of a 12 feet by eight feet pit, which was about six feet deep. The pit, covered first with mattresses and pillows and then with stone; then, three more bodies were placed and similarly covered and finally, the pit was covered with mud. The stones were used to keep wild animals away.” Neeraj Grover case

Neeraj Grover was killed in Maria Susairaj’s apartment in suburban Mumbai in May 2008 by her former fiancé, Emile Jerome Mathew, a Navy Lieutenant, and his body was allegedly chopped into several pieces, put into two bags by Mathew and Susairaj, who then drove to Manor in neighbouring Thane district, where they burnt the body to dispose it. The judge ruled in 2011 that Mathew had killed Neeraj in a fit of jealousy after finding him at Susairaj’s flat. But it was not a pre-planned murder, and so Mathew was indicted for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and of destroying evidence. Susairaj, the court had said, had been proven guilty of destruction of evidence. While Mathew was given a ten year sentence, Susairaj was given a three-year sentence which she had already served. Nithari killings

Surinder Koli was sentenced to death for rape and murder of a girl called Rimpa Haldar from Nithari village in February 2006. Koli, along with his employer Moninder Singh Pandher, was arrested on 29 December 2006, after the police recovered skeletons and other belongings of missing girls from the drain outside Pnadher’s house in Noida on the outskirts of the national capital. Koli had allegedly killed several girls, chopping their bodies to pieces before throwing them in the backyard and in the drain. The Supreme Court in June 2015 agreed to hear Uttar Pradesh government’s plea against commutation of death sentence of Surender Koli, convicted in 2006 Nithari serial killings case and issued a notice to the convict. Earlier in January this year, the death sentence of Surender Koli was  commuted to life imprisonment by the Allahabad high cour t on the ground of “inordinate delay” in deciding his mercy petition.