On Thursday, Indrani will be obligated to change into the green uniform sari she receives visitors in, as per jail rules, and meet the gentlemen from the income tax department. She may also at some point on Thursday video conference with Delhi in the INX Media-Karti Chidambaram case where she might become an approver.
Rejecting reports of his evading the law, he told reporters that the charges against him and his son were 'nothing further from truth'.
Congress leaders in the upper house called CAB unconstitutional, 'arbitrary executive fiat' to push Hindutva agenda.
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.
India's premier investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, is witnessing an unprecedented crisis since the last few weeks. At the heart of the crisis is the struggle between its two top bosses -- Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana. As the case continues to play out in the public with allegations being countered with more allegations, here's all you need to know about the feud and its various twists and turns.
Indrani is easily the most striking woman arriving in the court complex from jail on trial days. For those who don't know who she is, there is absurd puzzlement written large on faces when they bump into her. When she reaches or leaves the premises, one notices heads swivelling in jaw-dropping curiosity, as did a pair of transsexual undertrials who crossed her path at the last hearing of 2018, who were, not surprisingly, a less unusual sight than Indrani.
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.
'People wondered aloud why she had given up on the aging, getting-day-by-day-more-infirm avatar. And was freshly blooming.'
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 night before Sheena was allegedly killed, 'Indrani Madam instructed me to not send anyone up to her flat.' 'She told me to especially not allow Rahul Mukerjea.'
Indrani and Peter Mukerjea seemed more at ease on Wednesday, maybe with the INX Media interrogation over temporarily, chatting cheerfully and easily amongst themselves, and with former husband Sanjeev Khanna, at the back of the courtroom, in the accused enclosure.
Here are the latest updates in the case in which cops have said that they have a 'fair idea for the motive'
Lawyer: 'Did YOU not ever feel scared?' Shyamvar Rai: 'I am a driver, I said okay. Madam said it is your job...'
Why had the CBI decided to have Waghmare tell the court the tale surrounding this odd trip to Kolkata made for even odder reasons, close to a year-and-a-half after Sheena's murder? To show the kind of person Indrani was? And that the murder of her daughter was not a heat of the moment crime, given Indrani was capable of other odd, suspicious, premeditated acts like this?
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.'
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.
What Indrani doesn't know is that even if she is handed down a sentence of not guilty by the judge at the end of the long and meandering Sheena Bora murder trial, for India's legion of armchair judges, she will always be guilty. She won't be able to change that. Ever.
The ripping off the lid, that Mekhail did, on the chain of episodes that lead up to his sister's murder, while condemning Indrani for her actions, for the first time, paradoxically, allowed a more human -- if flawed and complicated -- picture to emerge of Indrani, allegedly The Woman Who Killed Her Own Daughter and shocked a nation.
It might have been the season of Basant Panchami, but for Pasbola it was definitely Halloween as he set about scaring the wits out of Rangwala, his tone growing harsher.
'At the back of the courtroom the three accused sat trying to catch the drift and fathom the new, inexplicable turn the case could be taking.' 'And the consequences it might have on their lives.'
High-society incidents like this one inevitably give rise to questions about the morality and ethics of the high and mighty. Unfortunately, they also deepen prejudices and reinforce stereotypes.
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.
In the 25 odd days that he has appeared before CBI Special Judge Jayendra Chandrasen Jagdale, you have experienced the entire range of emotions just observing him. Everything from pity to irritation. To bafflement. And shock. You have scoured his face, gazed into his eyes, watched his expressions and body language, searching vigilantly for motives. And come away no wiser. Who is Shyamvar Rai? Does anybody know?
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
When it came to his cross examination by Sanjeev Khanna's lawyer Niranjan Mundargi, Imtiaz Shaikh appeared to be afflicted by that peculiar gap-in-one's-memory or Choosy Memory Syndrome with his recall of other dates in his life, except those directly related with the murder, shaky or non-existent.
'Indrani said she had some things to discuss with Peter, which he digested with minor surprise.' 'He looked mildly dismayed. And refused to sit down next to her, in spite of her welcome.' In spite of months of wariness from Peter's side, the ice was broken.
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.
And then came the chief moment of Friday. If the courtroom had a soundtrack, Beethoven's 9th would be playing, providing a triumphant, dramatic prologue to the production of this last clip. A woman reporter was asking Mekhail about Sanjeev Khanna. He says clearly, without mincing words, emphatically: 'Never seen him. First time I am hearing his name.'
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.
Each time they held the leafy bedsheet over the window for a few seconds, a clearer but very grey visage of Indrani came into view. In the barely discernible image, Indrani seemed to look tired and downbeat. But then the bedsheet would be taken away and Indrani would disappear into the darkness once more.
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.
Throughout, Mekhail spoke calmly, with hardly an inflection making even the barest attempt to hijack his tone. His tone was so empty it made his narrative all the more touching. And ugly and grey, as the monsoon sky beyond the window.
The lesson Waghmare sternly received on Monday from CBI Investigating Officer K K Singh and CBI Prosecutor Bharat Badami about the way a witness must answer questions from the defence seemed to have had only a marginal effect on him. On Tuesday the timid former office boy still chose, unpredictably and remarkably, to answer many a question in the manner of his choosing. He told the room categorically that he had asked Indrani's former secretary Kajal Sharma not to forge Sheena Bora's signature on her resignation letter.
Trepidation made its home firmly on his face on Thursday, announcing its presence with lines of anxiety and the repeated jumpy widening of his eyes.
Indrani is clearly in charge in her little corner. She is speaking rapidly to a not-very-tall, pot-bellied, balding man, whom she repeatedly, decisively, asks, "Have you understood?" The tone is that of a boss talking to an employee. The words "cheque" and "two lakhs" float by.
It is not often that Goswami's Nation-Wants-to-Know shows become material evidence in a murder trial no less. Nor was it something CBI Special Judge J C Jagdale was wildly enthused about. It had to be done because as he put it to CBI Special Public Prosecutor Kavita Patil caustically: "Your witnesses gave interviews to channels about a serious crime."
Will there be answers? Will we ever know the truth about who murdered Sheena Bora?
There are many who don't mind leaving more than claw marks on people around them in their march to the top.
as the trial proceeds, Peter is beginning to look more and more haggard while Indrani by contrast is blossoming. Khanna appeared exhausted and more down and out than usual at this hearing.
Mekhail delivered the most deliberate heart-tugging line of the day: "If a son asks his mother for money is wrong, then tell me." At the back Indrani gave one of her most beaming smiles that was meant to convey the exact opposite. This was no mother happy that her son had said he turned to her when he needed money because she was his mother.
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
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