Coming to the defence of former media baron Peter Mukerjea, an accused in the Sheena Bora murder case, for the second time, his son Rahul Mukerjea, said on Saturday that the charges against his father were “outrageous”.
“Charges against my father are absolutely outrageous,” Rahul told mediapersons, as he came out of the CBI’s office in South Mumbai, where he had spent Friday night.
A day after the CBI accused Peter of playing an “active and important” role in the elimination of his son Rahul’s girlfriend Sheena and charged him with murder, conspiracy and destruction of evidence, Rahul was in no mood to let his father down in his hour of need.
This was despite the fact that a telephone conversation between Rahul and his father that the former had recorded after the sudden disappearance of Sheena in the last week of April 2012, helped the CBI to nail Peter in the Sheena Bora murder case. So much so that on the basis of this taped conversation — which Rahul has handed over to the CBI — the Prosecution told a metropolitan court on Friday that Peter had “misled” his biological son Rahul that Sheena was “alive” and “doing well” in the United States.
Saturday was the second day when Rahul defended his father over his alleged involvement in the murder of Sheena, ever since Peter’s arrest in connection with the sensational crime on Thursday night.
Meanwhile, in a development that may land in trouble some senior police officers who had investigated the Sheena Bora case in the initial stages in 2012, the Maharashtra Government has sought a fresh report from the State Director General of Police Pravin Dixit over the “lopsided” manner in which the Raigad district police investigated the case after a “decomposed and charred body” of the victim was found near Panvel.
Additional Chief Secretary (Home) KP Bakshi has sought a fresh report from DGP Pravin Dixit as he was not satisfied with the report filed by his predecessor Sanjeev Dayal.
“Since the then DGP has filed just a one-page report, the State Home department is not happy with the report Additional Chief Secretary (Home) K P Bakshi has sought a fresh report from the current State DGP,” a senior Home department official said.
Rahul, who had been engaged to Sheena on the eve of Diwali in Dehradun in October 2011, expressed his “shock” over the CBI’s charge that his father had known about the murder of Sheena.
“I don’t believe he knew (anything about the murder). Otherwise I wouldn’t be here,” Rahul had said when mediapersons buttonholed him outside the city court on Friday.
Rahul Mukerjea is the son of Peter Mukerjea from his first marriage with Shabnam Singh. Peter has two sons — Robin and Rahul — from this marriage. Peter and Shabnam separated in 1994. Rahul has since been living with his mother in Dehradun.
“Indrani made every effort to ensure the termination of relationship between Sheena Bora (deceased) and Rahul and even used Mikhail to send an email threatening her to disinherit her from the ancestral property at Guwahati,” the CBI stated in its chargesheet filed against Indrani, her second husband Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamwar Rai in a city court on Thursday.
Hours after it filed the chargesheet against Indrani and two others, the CBI arrested former media tycoon Peter Mukerjea for murder, conspiracy and destruction of evidence in the case on Thursday night.
The prosecution’s case has been that Indrani and other two arrested accused - her second husband Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamvar Rai - allegedly “abducted” Sheena between 6.30 pm and 7.30 pm on April 24, 2012, from Bandra (west) in their car and “strangulated” the latter in the vehicle and that on the following morning they carried the body of the deceased packed in a bag (which had they kept in the rear side of the car) to the jungles Gogade Khurd village off the Khopoli-Pen Road, where they doused the bag with petrol and set it on fire.
The seeking of a fresh report from the State DGP comes on the heels of speculation in the media that the CBI was planning was planning to book a senior police official for allegedly delaying the probe and thereby helping the accused in the case.
Bakshi also said that the state government had not received any official communication from the CBI on the questionable conduct of a police officer who investigated the Sheena Bora murder case earlier.
In a major lapse that came to light in the last week of August this year that the Raigad police had neither registered a First Information Report (FIR) nor filed an Accidental Death Report (ADR), after they found the highly charred body of Sheena in the jungles of Gogade Khurd village near Pen town on May 23, 2012.
Upset with the “botch-up” in preliminary investigations into the sensational murder case, Maharashtra’s the then Director General of Police Sanjeev Dayal ordered an inquiry into the “lapses” in the initial investigations and promised action against the erring police officials.
Though an entry about the discovery of a body was made in the Station Diary (SD) was made, the Raigad police chose to do a panchanama and collected samples of the body, before burying the body. The samples were later sent to the Sir JJ Hospital in Mumbai for examination.
A senior officer – R D Shinde, the then Superintendent of Police (SP) of Raigad district, who is currently Additional Commissioner of Police (Central Region) in Mumbai has come under scanner. He is facing two inquiries – one initiated by Dayal and another by Prashant Burude, Special Inspector General of Police of Konkan Range.
