Within days after the August 25 arrest of Indrani Mukerjea, the prime accused in the murder of her daughter Sheena Bora, Mumbai Police had successfully pieced together sufficient evidence to unearth a maze of bank accounts in India, Spain and the UK where the Mukerjeas had parked about Rs 800 crore.
But at this decisive juncture of the investigation, the Mumbai Police sleuths suspected that an additional Rs 600 crore had been stashed away in foreign banks. At the time, these could not be identified, primarily because the case had been “impaired” by the Devendra Fadnavis government’s intervention.
Did Fadnavis Govt Intervene to Cover up Top Names?
The Quint has learnt that what stunned investigators while sifting through the Mukerjeas’ bank and other property documents, besides their own digging, were “names” of central and state-level politicians, top industrialists and businesspersons who were directly or indirectly involved in furthering the finances of the Mukerjeas.
“The name of a much-too-well-known industrialist did crop up, but there were others which made the investigators scared. It was when other big names emerged that the Fadnavis government stepped in. The state government was kept in the loop on the revelations that the investigation had made till that point,” unimpeachable sources said to The Quint.
Indeed the Mumbai Police’s probe was at an “advanced stage” when the then-commissioner Rakesh Maria was suddenly transferred out and promoted, leaving a significant and critical part of the evidence collection process incomplete. Nevertheless, the CBI’s fresh investigation after it lodged a murder case on 29 September will benefit from the Mumbai Police probe.
Cocktail of Motives Behind Sheena’s Murder
But it was not this immense wealth alone that led to Sheena Bora’s alleged murder by Indrani Mukerjea.
Indrani’s murder motive, which the Mumbai Police was loath to reveal when the sensational case was being investigated by a select band of officers centred at Khar police station, was a complex combination of reasons that stemmed on the one hand from extreme hatred for Sheena for having an affair with a person close to her and her insecurities that arose from a very likely loss of the immense wealth that she sat on once INX Group was sold in February 2009.
Sheena Sought “Miniscule Part” of Mukerjeas’ Wealth
There is little doubt however that Sheena sought a “miniscule part” of the Mukerjeas’ wealth which Indrani controlled. Indrani was in near-total command of the huge volumes of money.
But in 2011, two things happened that may have led Indrani to devise the plan to eliminate her own daughter. One was the discovery that Sheena had a brief affair with a person very close to her. The other was the crystallising relationship between Rahul and her daughter whom she had been passing of as her younger sister in social circles.
Indrani of course strongly disapproved of the relationship between Rahul and Sheena. Peter too felt strongly against such a relationship. But by late 2011 or early 2012, Peter is said to have told investigators that he no longer objected to the Sheena-Rahul relationship since he had begun to see Sheena’s positive effects on his son. Peter learned that Sheena was not Indrani’s sister but her daughter following massive rows between the Mukerjea couple.
Indrani Came to Mumbai Two Months Before Murder
The police investigation reveals that with the rudiments of a plan to kill Sheena, Indrani arrived in Mumbai from the UK two months before the murder was actually committed. Inexplicable as it may sound, she involved the driver, Shyamwar Rai, into her plan. She next sought to rope in Khanna, who was not on sound financial footing in Kolkata, luring him in with the promise of investing some money in his modest business ventures. There is some evidence to suggest that Khanna played a part in routing out some amount of Indrani’s money through non-banking channels abroad.
Indrani had not severed all ties with Khanna since her divorce with him in 2001 when she met Peter in Mumbai. Vidhie, the daughter born to Indrani and Khanna was legally adopted by Peter. Over time, even Peter met Khanna on a few occasions, though there is nothing to suggest that there were any financial dealings between the two.
Sources said that the sequence of events and actions leading to Sheena’s murder was in line with the Mumbai Police’s investigation. “The murder took place in a lane behind National College in upscale Bandra,” the sources insisted, though they admitted that the pistol and three cartridges were planted on Shyamwar Rai to take him into custody.
How the Mumbai Police Connected the Dots
Rai was placed under surveillance when police informers revealed to their handlers that an autorickshaw driver (Rai had taken to driving an autorickshaw after his employment with the Mukerjeas was terminated once the murder had taken place) was heard boasting in a bar where he was drinking one night that he had taken part in a murder. Every move of the driver was watched and his phone conversations listened in on. He was picked up when the police were sure that he was involved in Sheena Bora’s murder. Indrani’s phone was also tapped before her arrest.
The tip-off that Sheena had been murdered came in the form of a phone call from the Meerut-based husband of one of Sheena’s best friends from Disneyland School in Guwahati. Sheena had attended the wedding of her friend in Guwahati in November 2011, following which the young couple visited Mumbai to meet her sometime in early 2012. It was then that the Meerut couple learned of the trouble that was brewing between Indrani and Sheena.
The Quint has learned reliably that after Sheena’s disappearance in April 2012, Rahul, who had made feeble attempts to register a missing person’s report in a Mumbai police station, had shared his misgivings with Peter who in turn had called up a senior police officer to inform him that Indrani’s daughter was untraceable.
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