'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?
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.
Something about the big car and its passengers, standing solemnly outside their vehicle, piqued the biker's interest.
The warmest reception came from his soon-to-be ex wife Indrani, who on spying him getting out of the lift, muttered an "Oh dear!" and walked over to him, trailed by her police guards, wreathed in high-wattage smiles.
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.
Shivade then asked if the skeleton finally came out of the ground in many parts. It was difficult not to gasp aloud at that revelation. Bhagat said that was true.
After ten minutes no one could keep track of the legal team's questions on the geography of the route Sandeep Patil took on his Pulsar Bajaj motorcycle, on the morning of April 25, 2012. Not the judge. Or the onlookers. Least of all Patil.
This week was the first time Peter and Indrani appeared in court no longer married, footloose and fancy free once again, even if in jail.
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.
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.
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.
'Quite the raconteur, much to the dismay of Courtroom 51's CBI Special Judge Jayendra Chandrasen Jagdale, Christopher 'Doglis' Marquis, a Bandra dog-breeder who was Prosecution Witness No 57 and a panch or witness, seemed to move into the witness box with glee, embellishing every answer that he gave to the lawyers' questions with a variety of additional details.' Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
Shivade: "You didn't find any brain inside the brain cavity?" Dr Thakur nodded. The judge shocked: "Huh?!"
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports on the Sheena Bora Trial.
More noticeable than the hue of his shirt was his mast style in the witness box. He seemed to be reinventing the truth every few minutes. He yarned on and on, navigating his testimony further and further away from the facts, but he never lost his aplomb.
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 Indrani, Sanjeev Khanna and Peter pass cupboard no 6 -- where the skull is stored -- what thoughts pass through their mind?
Indrani, radiant in an immaculate white and gold salwar-kurta that matched the moment, her hair open, a bindi gleaming on her forehead, beamed placidly, fully enjoying this small minute of victory.
The 25 odd witnesses that so far had given testimony had not come up with anything incriminating against Peter or the way Shivade characterised it -- "not even a whisper."
Without a moment of hesitation, Rai jumped up on his rickety wooden stool in the witness box. He then drew his legs close to his body and wrapped his arms around his knees and finally tucked his head into his knees demonstrating the fetal position.
Many pictures showed The Skeleton Named Sheena. For the purpose of the photographs, the skeleton had been re-assembled and looked straight at the camera.
In just 18 frames, the photograph of the dainty Sheena, with her winsome smile and starry eyes, dissolved, flesh falling off her facial bones, into what the CBI alleged was her corresponding yellowed, morose-looking skull with hollow, haunting eye sockets.
Indrani dressed in a short purple kurta and leggings, with a bandhini green-purple chunni, sindhoor glowing in her mang, was receiving a drubbing from her lawyers for the facts she had revealed before the court on Tuesday while arguing the rejoinder to her bail application. She was insisting: "But he asked me for a motive!"
Dr Gupta handled Shivade's blows with quite some equanimity... So it was often only Shivade down in the mud pit, egging and enticing the doctor to join the fight, while Dr Gupta cautiously kept to the sidelines, barely stepping a toe into the mud.
Judge Jagdale halted Dr Gupta's testimony several times because he felt it had neither order nor direction. Tightly controlling his irritation, his lips compressed, the judge explained as patiently as he could: "What he has done in this case should come (out in his testimony) in a lucid manner. You eat chapati and then rice. You cannot eat half a chapati and then have rice and then eat half a chapati..." "He is not a witness of facts. He is an expert witness. Either he is not prepared. Or you are not prepared."
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.
Lawyer Amit Ghag got up to tell the judge that Shrikant Shivade -- Salman Khan and Peter Mukherjea's lawyer -- would take a morning flight from Jodhpur to Mumbai and would be in court by 3 pm on Friday to cross-examine Sub-Inspector Dalvi. For a moment, Judge Jagdale looks startled. "But isn't he caught up with that case in Jodhpur?" the judge asked.
One always ponders over why the witnesses should not have poor memory when answering cross examination questions or recounting events that occurred six years ago. Too many witnesses seemed to have drunk some Harry Potter-esque Philosopher's Stone magic elixir that has Botoxed their fading memory to make it as good as new again.
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.
Sanjeev Khanna stepped out of his usual sort of absent-minded personality to actively 'log into' the hearing, following the testimony alertly, at times standing up in the accused box to catch all of what was being said. His co-accused Peter Mukerjea and Indrani Mukerjea were less attentive, but were not switched off either.
In the witness box, on bald embarrassing display, was not just Sub-Inspector Ganesh Dalvi, but the entire system of police investigation too.
'With folded hands, on humanitarian grounds, if she can get temporary bail on medical grounds so she can get treatment.' 'If she dies, the whole trial gets derailed.'
Back to Sheena Bora's grave, via e-time travel
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