Having enlarged the scope of investigations in the Sheena Bora murder case by booking key accused Indrani Mukerjea for her alleged attempt to murder her son from the first marriage Mikhail Bora, the Mumbai Police on Monday informed a city court that Indrani and the other arrested accused had used Skype, the voice-over IP and instant messaging service, for hatching a conspiracy to kill Sheena and her younger brother Mikhail on the same day.
On a day when Chief Metropolitan Magistrate SM Chandgade extended police custody of the three accused till September 5, the investigators told the court that they had booked Indrani under additional Sections 328 and 307 of IPC for allegedly attempting to kill her own son Mikhail by spiking his drink.
“During the course of the investigations, we have prima facie found that the lady accused (Indrani) had conspired to kill both her daughter Sheena and son Mikhail on the same day (April 24, 2012),” the city police told the court in its remand application filed in Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Chandgade’s court.
“After killing Sheena, the lady accused (Indrani) also tried to hide the information by claiming that her daughter was away from the country. That’s why we added offences under Section 202 (intentional omission) and 203 (giving false information),” the police told the court.
In its application seeking the extension of the custody of Indrani and two other key accused — her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyam Rai, the police explained in detail the progress of the investigations made in the case so far and listed as many as 14 reasons for which they wanted the extension of the custody of the three accused.
The investigators told the court that as part of the investigation, they had so far done panchnama of the places from where the accused had purchased materials like a can of petrol for use in the crime, they had recovered the forged resignation letter sent on Sheena’s behalf after her murder, had
possession of all investigation papers from the Pen police and recovered the suitcase purchased for packing the body of Mikhail whom Indrani allegedly wanted to eliminate along with Sheena.
listing reasons for seeking extension in remand, the investigators told the court that they wanted to establish the motive behind the gruesome crime; that they wanted to find out as to why they chose a deserted place like for disposing the body and who all were directly or indirectly involved in the crime, they wanted to seize gadgets used by Indrani, like mobiles, phones, laptops etc for committing the crime and they wanted to collect more evidence related to the crime.
Some of the other important reasons the investigators cited for seeking the extension of the remand of the accused were that they wanted to investigate the use of Skype by the accused for hatching the conspiracy and that the investigations were not confined to Mumbai alone and that they had to take the accused to various places in Maharashtra and outside like Guwahati and Kolkata.
Sources said that the investigators would examine the data on the mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers belonging to Indrani and her ex-husband Sanjeev to examine the nature of communication they had - in a bid to make a water-tight case
One of the things that the police are keen to know is, how long Indrani had been in touch with Sanjeev on a regular basis. All the call details are being examined by a special team of police officers and men. They would also check the details on Skype and if needed, help of the service provider would be sought.