Unearthing a crucial piece of evidence in the Sheena Bora murder case, a Mumbai Police team recovered skeletal remains of the deceased from the wooded area in the neighbourhood of Pen town in Raigad district where Sheena’s body had been burnt and dumped on April 25, 2012, even as the third arrested accused in the case, Sanjeev Khanna, confessed to his complicity in the sensational crime.
On a day when the Dean of the State-run JJ Hospital, Dr TP lahane, disclosed that “pieces of bones” purportedly from Sheena’s burnt body that had been disposed off in April 2012 did not help establish the “age, sex and cause of death” of the deceased, a team of Mumbai Police excavated the jungles of Gogade Khurd Village near Pen town and recovered Sheena’s skeletal remains, in what is being seen as a breakthrough from the point of view of forensic evidence in the case.
Talking to reporters late in the night, Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria, who had rushed a team of police official to the jungles surrounding the Gogade Khurd Village in the morning, said, “This morning, we recovered the skeletal remains of the deceased Sheena Bora... Tomorrow we will be sending Sheena’s skeletal remains to the laboratory for a DNA test”.
“Today, we have also recovered Sheena Bora’s passport from Dehradun. This negates the theory that Sheena Bora went to the US,” Maria said.
On a day when the third accused Sanjeev Khanna and two other key players, Peter Mukerjea and Mikhail Bora joined the investigations into the sensational crime, Maria said, “We have just interrogated the third accused. Khanna has confessed to his complicity in the crime. Mikhail has also given us some points which we will be verifying.”
Earlier in the day, with the help of casual labourers of the Pen Municipal Council, the visiting police team dug the area for six to seven hours, where the parts of Sheena’s
burnt body had been dumped by her mother Indrani Mukerjea nee Bora.
“The team recovered some ten to 12 body parts, including bones, from the spot. We are not sure whether the body parts could be that of Sheena. We will be sending them to a forensic laboratory to establish if these parts belonged to the deceased,” a police source said.
In a related development, Dr lahane of the JJ Hospital told The Pioneer in the evening, “We have not been able to determine the age, sex or cause of death of the person concerned from the pieces of bones that were handed over to our hospital on May 25, 2012 (a month after Sheena’s burnt body had been dumped in Pen jungles). I sent out a report to that effect to the Pen police on December 13, 2013”.
“We had preserved the pieces of bones submitted to us by the Pen police. Today, the Mumbai Police came and collected the pieces of bones from us. From the bones we had received, we are not in a position even today to determine the sex or age of the person concerned,” Dr lahane said.
Official sources said in the evening that Mumbai Police would send the bones collected from JJ Hospital, as also the parts recovered from the Pen jungles earlier in the day, to the Central Forensic laboratory at Kalina in north Mumbai, in the next couple of days.
Meanwhile, Sanjeev Khanna, former husband of prime accused Indrani and the third arrested accused in the Sheena Bora murder case, was remanded by a city court to police custody till August 31.
Khanna, who had been flown into Mumbai from Kolkata on Thursday night, was on Friday morning produced before a Bandra court, which remanded him to police custody till Monday next.
Khanna, who was allegedly present in the car of his ex-wife and main accused Indrani, allegedly strangulated Sheena on April 24, 2012 and disposed off the burnt body in neighbouring Raigad district the following day, has been charged under Sections 364 (kidnapping), 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) and 120-B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
On his part, Khanna had admitted during the preliminary investigations that he was present in the car in which Sheena was strangulated. He had however denied any involvement in the crime, saying that he had slept off on the back seat of the car and that he did not know what happened while he was asleep.
Soon after the police obtained Khanna’s custody, the investigating team - headed by Maria himself - interrogated him intensely. later in the day, he was brought face to face with the two other accused - Indrani and her driver Shyam Rai -and they were interrogated thoroughly to establish the role played by Khanna in the murder.
Simultaneously, the investigators questioned two other key players - Indrani’s third husband and Star India’s ex-CEO Peter Mukerjea and her son from her first marriage Mikhail who had been flown on Thursday night from Guwahati - in connection with the crime.
Peter had earlier gone on record saying that he was not aware of the fact that Sheena was Indrani’s daughter, since he had all along believed that she was his wife’s sister. He had also disclosed that his son from his first marriage Rahul was in a relationship with Sheena, who happened to be his step-sister, and that both he and Indrani had not approved of the relationship between the two (Rahul and Sheena).
In a series of media interactions, Guwahati-based Mikhail had among other things said that “ I could be my mother’s next target,” that “Indrani perhaps planned not only to kill me but my grandparents too for their property,” that his mother Indrani had killed Sheena for “some reasons” and that he was in possession of some “evidence” to prove this.
On his arrival in Mumbai to join the investigations into the Sheena Bora murder case, Mikhail said: “I will extend full cooperation to Mumbai Police. I will get justice for her”. Sheena and Mikhail are Indrani’s children from her first husband Siddhartha Das.