Oh, what a strange 'tangled web' these two men and one woman have been caught up in for the last nine years. Or allegedly 'weaved'.
'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.
Vidhie Mukerjea, a key witness in the Sheena Bora murder case, denied making a statement to probe agencies, claiming documents in the CBI chargesheet were forged. She also alleged that Rahul and Rabin Mukerjea stole her mother's assets and had a motive to falsely implicate her.
Walmik Karad, a close aide of Maharashtra minister Dhananjay Munde, has been charged with ordering the murder of sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh, who allegedly opposed Karad's extortion bid targeting a wind energy company. According to a chargesheet filed by the state Crime Investigation Department (CID), Karad allegedly asked his associates to "eliminate" anyone who interfered with their extortion attempt. Deshmukh was abducted, tortured, and murdered in December 2024 after he attempted to stop the extortion bid. Karad and several others have been charged with murder, extortion, and organized crime.
The accused, Sudarshan Chandrabhan Ghule (26) and Sudhir Sangle (23), were handed over to the special investigation team of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which is probing the case, the official said.
The SIT will be headed by Crime Investigation Department's (CID) Deputy Inspector General Basavraj Teli, said an order issued by the state Home department.
One of the high points of the proceedings was when Indrani Mukerjea's lawyer smartly utilised Dr Zeba Khan's expert status to pose her A Most Curious Question. He asked her if a skull can grow new teeth, even after the person, who it belonged to, had died, three years before. We can be sure that the discrepancy between the number of teeth discovered in the skull unearthed in 2012 and the skull shown in court in September 2019 will come up soon in Courtroom No 51. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora Murder Trial.
Police are examining the past records of the arrested men in the sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh murder case and a related case of extortion to decide if the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) should be invoked, sources said on Thursday. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said he had requested senior lawyer Ujjwal Nikam to appear as a special prosecutor in the murder case. The Crime Investigation Department (CID) has sought old case papers and chargesheets against the arrested men. Deshmukh, the sarpanch of Massajog village in Beed, was abducted and brutally killed on December 9, allegedly for opposing an extortion bid by some persons who had demanded money from a windmill company. Beed Police has put up posters seeking information about whereabouts of three wanted accused in the murder case. CM Fadnavis said he spoke to BJP MLA from Beed, Suresh Dhas who demanded that Nikam be appointed as special public prosecutor in the case. Nikam was a special public prosecutor in several high-profile cases, including the 26/11 terror attacks and 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts. Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar claimed that "smaller fish" could be killed in fake encounters to save the "big fish" involved in the Deshmukh murder and extortion cases. Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra legislative council Ambadas Danve said the trial in the case should be conducted outside Beed district. NCP leader Dhananjay Munde, who has come under fire after the alleged involvement of his aide Karad in the extortion matter came to light, said those who murdered Santosh Deshmukh should be tried in a fast-track court and "hanged till death." The government on Wednesday set up a 10-member SIT to probe the case, headed by Deputy Inspector General -CID Basavraj Teli.
Rahul Mukerjea's two-day cross examination in early November left many questions unanswered even as new ones came to the fore in the Sheena Bora Murder Trial, reports Prasanna D Zore.
Did Sheena Bora board a Jet Airways flight on July 22, 2012, a full three months after her death in April 2012?
The CBI had sought an urgent hearing of the plea before the alternate bench of Justice Kotwal.
Indrani was spiritedly telegraphing details of the jewellery from the back of the court...
When a trial for a murder is going on -- with no end in sight -- more than ten years after the crime took place, it will not feel like the murder happened yesterday.
Indrani laughed loudly. She looked like the cat that got the cream, smiling gaily. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
Rahul knew this was coming. That 'dirt' would be dug up.
All along, Rahul, right till today 10 years later, hung onto his gut feeling that something surely had happened to Sheena.
A yellow-sari daintily clad Indrani was beaming broadly and it seemed like for the first time, for her, Rahul had done something right. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora Murder Trial.
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.
Police have detained the father of a 17-year-old boy allegedly involved in a car accident that killed two persons in Maharashtra's Pune city, an official said on Tuesday.
If Indrani Mukerjea wanted to whitewash her image, this docu series was not the right platform, asserts Deepa Gahlot.
A protest for Maratha reservation in Jalna district of central Maharashtra turned violent on Friday, leading to dozens of persons including police personnel getting injured, officials said.
Indrani said that the inordinate delay in conducting the trial has deprived her of her fundamental right to work in the country of her nationality (England) and residence, as also the freedom to travel freely outside India.
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.
Dhondiba Sangle, who has spent 16 years working at the Government Medical College and Hospital in Aurangabad says he never felt any kind of fear while serving the patients in the past. However, the situation is no more the same for him. He says that he is constantly under fear while working in the hospital wards, where COVID-19 patients have been undergoing treatment.
'At any point did you find out why Sheena had not disclosed her true relationship with Indrani?' Rahul: 'Sheena had told me as her grandparents were dependent on Indrani financially (and if she told the truth) her grandparents would suffer.' 'She had slapped Sheena the night before which she was very not happy about.'
'The Ever Given, which had 200,000 tonnes of cargo, was too long for the Suez Canal.'
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As Peter sits outside the court with his sister, Indrani walks in with a request. It has been three months since Peter has started speaking to Indrani again, after a long silence of two years.
In walked the scruffy band of pirates, without any swagger. Mostly tall or burly men, with weather beaten, resigned faces, the majority were dressed in track pants and tees; a few had skull caps. Some of their T-shirts had messages like 'I'm not in danger, I'm danger' or 'Long Beach California Surfer'.