'On August 22, 2015, Shyamvar Rai disclosed to you that he had committed the murder of Sheena Bora along with Rahul Mukerjea.' How would Indrani have reacted to this?
Sheena Bora's birthday fell on February 11 and it's been 14 years since she disappeared into thin air. She would have been 39. Nearly one-and-a-half decades later are we patiently inching nearer to knowing the truth of what happened?
Indrani Mukerjea, in pure white, sporting dancing pearl jhumkas, bobbed about the accused box, occasionally floating up front to whisper urgent suggestions to her lawyer Ranjeet Sangle as retired cop and prosecution witness Dinesh Kadam gave her a long look. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel returns to cover the Sheena Bora murder trial after 18 months.
CBI's Special Crime Branch lodged a case in the designated court against Indrani, her former husband and Sanjay Khanna and former driver Shyamvar Pinturam Rai.
Indrani is in a buoyant and energetic frame of mind these days -- in a full-on Mood Positive. She has a tell-all book titled Unbroken out, that she terms as an 'eet ka jawab kalam se' and appears in media interviews all over the place, when she is not kick-boxing, doing yoga, or travelling, visiting temples, or floating in shikaras on Srinagar's Dal Lake.
Peter Mukerjea's lawyers move court to allow him a heart operation at a private hospital.
I don't think Rahul Mukerjea once referred to Sheena as killed or murdered and always referred to it as her disappearance. It felt like he still used the word 'disappear' because killed had a finality to it that he didn't want to face.
All along, Rahul, right till today 10 years later, hung onto his gut feeling that something surely had happened to Sheena.
When Sheena got down from his car on the evening of April 24, 2012, Rahul says she told him, "Bye. Love you. See you later."
CBI sources said that agency teams swooped down at the residences of Peter and Indrani, two each in Mumbai and Goa, Indrani's ancestral home in Guwahati, her driver Shyamvar Pinturam Rai's houses in Mumbai and Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh, and the residence of Sanjeev Khanna in Kolkata.
Over the weekend and Labour Day, a change seemed to have come over the former secretary and her memory had all but deserted her. Not unexpectedly, Kajal Sharma had lost much of her exactness. Her vocabulary had shrivelled to four or five words.
It is becoming more and more apparent that Shyamvar Rai is like an onion. And a pretty pungent one at that. As layer after layer of his life gets peeled off, in full view of the court, new layers of his character are exposed.
Tuesday was the last that Courtroom 51 saw of Shyamvar Rai, accused No 3 and approver in the Sheena Bora murder trial. True to form, Rai's final hours in the witness box were rather acrimonious. His cross-examination at several points turned downright ugly.
Much to his surprise, Peter finds Sanjeev indicating he should sit in the middle, next to Indrani. This spot is normally occupied by Sanjeev, Indrani's former husband, who has probably found himself a willy-nilly barrier between the warring couple. The Mukerjeas, clearly, had matters to discuss.
In the witness box, on bald embarrassing display, was not just Sub-Inspector Ganesh Dalvi, but the entire system of police investigation too.
Shyamvar Pinturam Rai and Pradeep Waghmare. Both erstwhile employees of Peter and Indrani Mukerjea. In the witness stand on Monday, Waghmare came across as a cheerful, straightforward man who is attempting to clamber his way towards prosperity. In the witness stand on Friday, Rai shed his customary jauntiness and broke down weeping, begging forgiveness from CBI Special Judge Jayendra Chandrasen Jagdale.
Judge Jagdale, with a severe expression shadowing his face, looked sharply at Manoj Patil, Airtel's nodal officer, and told him plainly: "It is difficult to digest what you are saying (about) giving call data, but not giving call timings and durations."
When the hearings resume January 3, you wonder how many things will change and how many things will remain forever the same, as the Sheena Bora trial moves ahead.
Indrani was cheering Pasbola on from the back, with little, happy whoops, that she muffled with her chunni. Indrani was in her element on Friday. The defence's cross-examination was clearly going her way and Indrani was delighted.
'He had a carry bag made of plastic. One pistol came out of it. There was also a magazine which had three rounds. And a mobile and a Rs 100 currency note.' No prizes for guessing who that was...
It will be his fifth birthday in jail as an undertrial. He was arrested two days before his birthday in 2015. Tuesday also marked Peter's fourth year in jail.
A mere pair of shoes sets off the kind of harsh condemnation Indrani draws in these corridors of justice. That she being a woman who killed her daughter -- never mind that she is an undertrial and the crime has not yet been proven -- apart from making her an object of curiosity, also makes her, by perception, more evil than the men that flood these corridors, facing trial for similar or worse crimes.
'If I have to write a letter I will give it to the media. They will put it out.'
'There is a communication between Rahul Mukerjea and Sheena Bora.' 'First on the 26th. And then on the 27th and then on the 28th.' 'See the messages wherein Rahul Mukerjea tells Sheena Bora "Baba I am in the car park. Come".' 'And Sheena Bora replies to Rahul Mukerjea: "Five min bas".' 'This explains why none of the bodies matched Sheena Bora...'
It would seem that Indrani's application was not something prepared or maybe even sanctioned by her lawyers and was a courtroom enterprise she had embarked on by herself, perhaps not realising it distracted from the main business of the trial and didn't help her cause.
Indrani exclaimed excitedly, her face lighting up like a little girl's: "I know him soo0o well." Sanjeev Khanna, Accused No 2, jokingly suggested to Badami: "Influencing the witness!" Badami retorted good humouredly: "She can't influence witnesses. She can only influence you and Peter."
Maruti Warke's basic understanding illustrated how far outside the system most less privileged Indians are -- simple, innocent people barely but admirably eking out an existence, with almost no knowledge of their surroundings or owning even the basic smarts to go about life. The same people who instinctively and often astutely vote governments into and out of office in New Delhi without knowing the entire reality of this country. The folks who are actually the essence of India.
Happy with her latest move, Indrani departed from Courtroom 51 with a spring in her step. The woman who hopped up into the jail truck was a cheerful one.
Pasbola had a number of queries about the nails of the corpse found at Gagode Khurd. Did it have nails? Nails, in a case of strangulation, are key because they often have particles and skin beneath them to show the victim had been grasping something as s/he was strangled.
Ganesh Dhene said there had only been two or three mango trees in the grove, from where he found the skeleton, which he specified had no flesh on it.
He is, at the closing of 2018, a man quite different from the Peter Mukerjea who entered judicial custody three-and-a-half years ago. He is a man not yet convicted of a crime, but already suffering for it, like the hundreds that enter these courts every day and the thousands Peter shares jail space with in a central Mumbai prison.
TRPs have a better affinity for Karti Chidambaram and his alleged timely assistance to INX Media, the company Peter and Indrani once ran, than the more recent murder of a 25-year-old woman.
'You don't want to admit that it is your wife in the video because she said you were arrested on Wednesday (August 19; Shyamvar Rai states he was arrested on August 21, a Friday).'
After 800 days, is it a little clearer that Accused No 1 through 4 are responsible for her death?
Singh and Badami subsequently took Waghmare to a corner of the corridor outside, where others have no access, and gave him a lecture. The conversation was largely inaudible, except for a phrase here or there. The thrust was unmistakable. Waghmare had to learn not to give such detailed answers to the defence.
If an FIR had been registered by the Pen police -- instead of a mere entry in the station diary -- an investigation could have taken place and the body might have been identified as Sheena's, leading to the case being cracked much earlier.
It turned out that Indrani, who was wearing the Navratri Day 2 green, was fasting for the festival. That caused the impish CBI prosecutor Badami to ask her police detail, "looking for salvation?".
As the weeks go by in this trial, it has emerged that Shyamvar Rai is that rare species of driver whose knowledge of distances, directions and routes surprisingly would not even fill the back of a postage stamp.
Sameer Buddha was just the kind of witness Indrani's lawyer Sudeep Pasbola dislikes. Someone, who had temporarily dumped his memory before entering the court. He answered most questions, one after another, one after another, one after another, with a monotonous, deadpan: 'I don't remember.' 'I don't remember.' 'I don't remember.'
Noise levels began to climb and everyone else in the room stared agape as the fracas escalated, including the trio of accused at the back. Peter, Sanjeev and Indrani stood at the edge of their enclosure craning to see the spectacle.
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