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."
'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...'
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."
Her elfin face could be seen and once more after many days the victim of this murder had a face and a presence.
In the witness box, on bald embarrassing display, was not just Sub-Inspector Ganesh Dalvi, but the entire system of police investigation too.
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.
The question being silently telegraphed around the court room was: When did this happen? Wasn't this trial about Indrani murdering her daughter to prevent her from marrying Rahul Mukerjea, her husband Peter Mukerjea's son from his first marriage?
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.
'Dalvi, you are saying you asked a question, but don't remember the answer?' asks Pasbola incredulously. 'Yes.' 'You are lying.'
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.
Ever since Mekhail had first entered the courtroom, he had, it would seem, never once looked at his mother, though they were a few metres away from each other. Curiosity, residual regard, memories, anger, none of it, could make him even look at the woman who gave birth to him. Was his hatred so overpowering?
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.
Clusters of policemen and television journalists alertly anticipated the arrival of Mumbai's joint commissioner of police, who, it was confirmed by most people I asked, does not visit court often. No one could remember when they had last heard of Deven Bharti appearing as a witness in a murder trial.
The close-onto four years (since November 2015) Peter has spent in Arthur Road jail, central Mumbai, in judicial custody, have taken their toll, lending him a bit of a melancholy stoop, a laborious gait and a tired face, turning him prematurely into a much older man than his nearly 64 years. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
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.'
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.
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."
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.
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
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.
She continued to cry, harder, feebly dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief she had received, and declared painfully: "He is hurting my emotions!"
'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...
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.
Accused No 1 announced that there had been a change in the circumstances of her health condition. She produced a thick 19-page document, written in her neat, very feminine handwriting, detailing her condition, its symptoms and the consequences it could have on her health and well-being.
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.
'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?
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.
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."
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports on the Sheena Bora Trial.
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?
Balbinder Singh Dhami, who has played an inspector, for over a year, in The Zee Horror Show, took on the role of a witness on Monday. It was a part he had no experience of.
'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.'
Shivade: "You didn't find any brain inside the brain cavity?" Dr Thakur nodded. The judge shocked: "Huh?!"
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.
Something about the big car and its passengers, standing solemnly outside their vehicle, piqued the biker's interest.
'Give him a chance to live,' Peter's lawyer told the court.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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