There it lay, a photograph on the desk under a stapler, and later a stamp pad, forgotten, done with, like its subject, a Mumbai Metro One employee who vanished overnight.
Mukerjea, who was admitted in the state-run J J Hospital for the treatment of suspected drug overdose has been brought back to the jail, Inspector General (prisons) Rajvardhan Sinha said.
One couldn't help feeling a certain melancholy viewing these now vagrant documents and photographs that would never be rightfully cherished. The pictures spoke to you. They offered slices of extinguished lives. They breathed sadness too, for what could have been and will never be. The sweet promises that Life made and insolently, arrogantly never kept.
The court had rejected Indrani's plea for interim bail to visit her hometown Guwahati.
'People wondered aloud why she had given up on the aging, getting-day-by-day-more-infirm avatar. And was freshly blooming.'
Indrani called her personal assistant Kajal Sharma from the UK, May 3, 2012, and told her she had to sign Sheena's resignation letter as if she was Sheena signing it. But she had to first practice the signature and send Indrani proof of her proficiency in signing Sheena's name before sending the letter off. Sharma said she was reluctant and told the court that she told Indrani as much, but Indrani demanded it of her.
'Dalvi, you are saying you asked a question, but don't remember the answer?' asks Pasbola incredulously. 'Yes.' 'You are lying.'
'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.'
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.
As he was giving evidence, Dr Matcheswalla peremptorily summoned the CBI representative over to the witness box and whispered something. Indrani Mukerjea's advocate Sudeep Pasbola immediately cut in, wondering what he was up to: "Please, please, please." Dr Matcheswalla, looking innocently startled, said: "I was asking if I can order for tea."
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.
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.
Noted lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani on Saturday said that he had asked Peter Mukerjea, arrested in Sheena Bora murder case, not to talk to the media about the case but the former media magnate's interview to a news channel prior to this "advice" had already started the "media trial".
Dramatic minutes like the sentencing by a judge or a round of artful cross examination hog all the attention in a courtroom. But more noteworthy and infinitely more memorable are the human moments -- Like when a brother and sister hug before a judge. Or the steady support between a husband and a wife in court.
'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.'
Then came the electrifying climax of Tuesday's hearing. Pasbola showed Sharma copies of cheques that had been deposited at the bank with Indrani's signature on them. He accused Sharma of forging Indrani's signature and collecting the money for herself. In the back Indrani stood up in the accused box and very pointedly nodded her head up and down and mouthed, "She did!".
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
Seeing Indrani in court with her perpetually sunny demeanour and beaming face is sometimes as unreal an experience as making sense of court delays.
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."
The Mukerjeas' former driver could remember every detail of Sheena Bora's alleged murder five years ago, including on what day he took Indrani to the beauty parlour, and the brands of liquor he bought, but was unable to recall anything subsequently or more recently...
Doctors said she is now stable. It is suspected that she consumed some pills.
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.
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.
Friends and acquaintances speculate what may have led Sanjeev Khanna to help Indrani Mukherjea allegedly commit a crime.
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.
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.
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."
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?
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.
Not Mekhail. Not Rahul. Not anyone. 'Wouldn't someone have asked?' Indrani asked.
The former media executive, who is now lodged in Byculla women's jail in Mumbai, was admitted to the J J Hospital on Friday night for chest pain.
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.
'Who is the right Mekhail? Mekhail I or Mekhail II?'
In the witness box, on bald embarrassing display, was not just Sub-Inspector Ganesh Dalvi, but the entire system of police investigation too.
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
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."
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