Exclusive: Is Indrani’s Ex-Husband Siddhartha Das in Bangladesh?
Siddhartha Das may have crossed over to Bangladesh days before Indrani Mukerjea’s arrest. What could he know?
advertisement
Police Sniff Indrani’s First Husband May Have Crossed to Bangladesh
Contrary to the statement made by relatives of Indrani Mukerjea’s first husband Siddhartha Das, about him not being in touch with them for the past 10 years, the Mumbai Police has information that he may have crossed over to Bangladesh 12 days ago – on or around August 19, two days before investigators received an anonymous tip-off that Sheena Bora was murdered in April 2012.
A resident of Karimganj, Assam, Siddhartha, the police suspect, reached Sutarkandi which is about 10 kms from the India-Bangladesh border (across Karimganj is Sylhet district) with the help of a man called Abdul Abed who was an accused in a 2004 Mizoram bank robbery case.
Why Did Siddhartha Das ‘Flee’ Six Days Before Indrani’s Arrest?
What is baffling investigators who have been despatched to pursue the probe into Sheena Bora’s murder to Silchar in Assam, where Siddhartha’s mother and a younger brother live, is why Siddhartha went “underground” on August 19, six days before Indrani Mukerjea was arrested for conspiring to murder Sheena along with two other accomplices.
Was Siddhartha aware of the murder? Was he the one who tipped off sleuths in Mumbai on August 21 that Indrani’s driver Shyam Manohar Rai was one of the co-conspirators?
Rai was arrested on August 21 and subjected to interrogation in which he allegedly revealed Indrani’s involvement in the murder of her daughter Sheena. A day after her arrest on August 25, Mumbai Police arrested Indrani’s second husband, Kolkata-based businessman Sanjeev Khanna as an alleged accomplice.
Friends of the Das family in Karimganj divulged that before leaving for Sutarkandi, Siddhartha sent away his wife (he had remarried after his divorce with Indrani) and children to Durgapur in West Bengal to live with his younger brother Jayanta Das. A resident of Banamali Road in Karimganj town where the border with Bangladesh is the Kushiyara river, Siddhartha is a supplier of timber and furniture in Shillong and Kolkata.
Was Siddhartha Das Blackmailing Indrani?
The Quint had earlier reported that before disappearing, Siddhartha may have been trying to blackmail Indrani. He may have informed the police about Sheena’s murder when Indrani did not allegedly give in to his blackmail tactics.
Police sources had earlier confirmed to The Quint that till recently, at least one person had unsuccessfully tried to blackmail former Star India CEO Peter Mukerjea’s wife.
Police Investigate Das’ and Indrani’s Parting of Ways
The police are studying the exact dates Indrani and Siddhartha married and the year they were divorced. An affidavit Indrani signed in 1992 suggests that she and “S Das” parted ways in a mutual divorce and she had no relations with him since 1989.
If the two were divorced by 1989, how is it that Sheena was born to them in 1989? Even Sheena’s high school leaving certificate issued by the Assam Board of Secondary Education states her date of birth to be February 11, 1989. Besides, a birth certificate of Sheena Bora shows that she was born on February 11, 1989, and that her father was Upendra Kumar Bora and mother Durgarani Bora, parents of Indrani.
Taking her year of birth as 1989, Sheena would have been 23 when she was murdered on April 24, 2012.
Soon after Indrani’s arrest, her Guwahati-based son Mikhail had claimed while Sheena was born on February 28, 1989, he was born on September 9, 1990. He was, however, evasive about his and Sheena’s biological parents.
Indrani’s 1992 affidavit claims that at the time of submitting the document before a Guwahati magistrate Mikhail was three years old and Sheena four years. This would mean that Sheena was born in 1988 and Mikhail would have been born in 1989. The years simply don’t add up, leaving behind the strong suspicion that both the children were born out of wedlock.
Reports indicate that a 1997 electoral roll of Karimganj shows Siddhartha’s age to be 28 at that time. So he was 19 when he married Indrani in 1988 and was already working. Siddhartha’s brother Shantanu told mediapersons on August 30 that the Indrani and Siddhartha were married for about three years. This too doesn’t add up if Indrani’s information in her 1992 affidavit, in which she claims to have had no relations with Siddhartha since 1989, is considered true.
Sometime after Indrani and Siddhartha went each other’s way, she moved to Calcutta where she married Sanjeev Khanna in 1993. Indrani’s marriage with Khanna lasted till 2001. What Indrani did in Calcutta at that time is not clear, though there are suggestions that she ran an HR consultancy firm. But she did not have any specialised HR background or training to run a recruitment firm.
(With inputs from Anjana Dutta.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)