Lost track of Sheena Bora case? A cop chronicles the mystery, minus the hysteria

Have you lost grasp of the Sheena Bora murder mystery? It's quite possible. The noise and hysteria over the case, perpetuated mainly by TV news channels, has drowned out the essential cold facts.

Here, YS Pawar, former joint commissioner of police, Mumbai, draws on his rich experience as a cop to summarise the case in neat factual detail.

Who was Sheena Bora?

It's necessary to know Sheena's background to understand why her murder has attracted such frenzied attention.

Sheena moved to Mumbai in 2006 and was introduced by Indrani Mukerjea to everyone, including her husband Peter, as her younger sister. Indrani concealed the fact that Sheena and Mikhail Bora were her children and instead told everyone they were her siblings.

Peter helped Sheena get admission to St Xavier's College, from where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts. In 2009, she joined Reliance Infrastructure as a management trainee. In June 2011, Sheena joined Mumbai Metro One as an assistant manager.

In Mumbai, she was introduced to Rahul Mukerjea, Peter's son and her step-brother, and the duo developed a romantic relationship, leading to cohabitation from 2009 to 2012.

Allegedly, Indrani did not approve of the relationship. On 24 April 2012, Sheena took a leave of absence and then "sent in her written resignation". On the same day, Rahul received a "break-up" SMS from Sheena's phone.

Indrani claimed Sheena had gone to the US for higher studies and hence a missing person FIR was never filed. Sheena was never seen after 24 April 2012.

Sequence of events that followed

23 May 2012: The police found a decomposed body after villagers of Gagode in Pen tehsil, Maharashtra, complained of foul odour.

21 August 2015: Shyamvar Pinturam Rai, Indrani's driver, was arrested following the seizure of a 7.63-bore pistol from him.

26 August: Indrani revealed that Sheena was her daughter from a previous marriage and not her sister.

27 August: Sanjeev Khanna, a Kolkata-based businessman and Indrani's ex-husband was arrested.

Shyam Rai confessed that he murdered Sheena and disposed of her body on Indrani's direction.

28 August: Khanna confessed to his "complicity in the crime".

29 August: The Maharashtra Police ordered a probe into why the Raigad police did not register an Accidental Death Report after they found a burnt corpse, suspected to be of Sheena Bora, in 2012.

30 August: Khanna and Rai were taken to Raigad by the Mumbai Police to "recreate" the crime scene.

They were taken there along the same route they had used back in 2012. "They could have stopped at a petrol pump or hotel or medical shop on the way to Pen," a senior officer explained. And some witnesses might remember seeing them.

The police noticed that certain details of the sequence of events were missing from Rai's statements. This made them suspect that more people could be involved in the murder.

String of false claims

Indrani's claim that her daughter was in the United States seems to have fallen flat as the police have found her passport at Rahul's Dehradun house.

Indrani reportedly bribed a Mumbai psychiatrist to forge a certificate declaring her son Mikhail mentally unstable. According to the police, she planned to use it if Mikhail continued his efforts to find his sister.

According to media reports, Indrani's birth name is Pari Bora. The Telegraph quoted her neighbours as saying that she visited her home in Guwahati in 1990 and left her children - Sheena, 2 and Mikhail, 1 - with her parents.

The Mukerjeas allegedly siphoned off money from INX and put some in Sheena's account. She refused to return it

Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria has said Indrani had Sheena's signatures forged on her "resignation letter" to Mumbai Metro One as well as the notice to her landlord.

"With regard to the resignation letter and letter to the landlord, we have traced the person who gave the signature of Sheena," he said.

The resignation letter was sent in May 2012, though the police have confirmed that Sheena was killed on 24 April.

Complicated web of relationships

While being interrogated about her past, Indrani broke down and told the police about her relationships with Siddharth Das and Sanjeev Khanna before marrying Peter.

She claimed her father would force himself on her when she was young, which resulted in her giving birth to Sheena when she was just 17.

An affidavit attributed to Indrani suggests her mother Durga Ranee Bora had adopted Sheena and Mekhail. The affidavit states that Indrani had "mutually separated" from her husband S Das in 1989, and that Sheena and Mekhail, aged 4 and 3 years, were in her custody.

The Mumbai Police believe that before marrying Peter in 2002, Indrani altered all documents related to Sheena and Mekhail to maintain the story of the two being her siblings.

Night of the murder

This is how Indrani's driver, Shyam Rai, described Sheena's murder:

Indrani called Khanna on the night of 23 April 2012 and had a long conversation with him. She then booked a room in Hotel Hilltop in Worli, Mumbai.

On 24 April, Khanna came to Mumbai and stayed in the hotel room she had booked.

At around 7 pm, Indrani and Khanna went to the National College on Linking Road in Bandra to pick up Sheena.

Once inside the car, Khanna strangled Sheena and stuffed her body into a bag with Indrani's help. Rai claimed the bag was then kept in the trunk of the car.

Rai then drove to a secluded and thickly-forested place near Gagode village. There, they poured petrol on the bag and set it on fire. The driver was paid Rs 1 lakh for his help in the crime.

They left only after Indrani and Khanna were sure that Sheena's body had been completely burnt. It was around 4 am on 25 April.

Plot to kill the son

The police have seized a suitcase purportedly meant for disposing of the body of Mikhail, whom Indrani had allegedly planned to kill.

The police are inquiring whether it was one of the two suitcases reportedly purchased before Sheena's murder and one of which was found with her remains.

The staff at the Dadar shop where the suitcases came from have told the police that they were bought by Rai in April 2012. They have been asked to try and look for a bill.

The police have also detained a suspected contract killer who was allegedly hired by Indrani for Rs 2.5 lakh to kill Mikhail. "Our information is that the plan failed to take off. He has admitted that he was hired by Indrani to eliminate Mikhail," The Times of India quoted an official as saying.

Indrani was kept under watch for 4 months after a tip-off that she was involved in her 'sister's disappearance'

Mikhail has claimed that his mother had tried to kill him thrice, on the day of Sheena's murder and twice before in Guwahati. He claimed Indrani had drugged him the day his sister was killed but he managed to escape from the Worli hotel where he had been called on the pretext of straightening out some family issues.

Sanjeev has reportedly told interrogators that he and Indrani planned to kill both Mikhail and Sheena. "Mikhail was summoned to Mumbai by Indrani to discuss a property she planned to buy for him. When he saw Sanjeev at the house, he got suspicious but Indrani told him Sanjeev was mediating the deal," a source said.

"Mikhail was offered a drink that was spiked but he got wary and managed to escape. He then immediately left for Guwahati."

Motive for the murder

What's a bigger motive for murder than money? According to Tehelka, the Mukerjeas had siphoned off a lot of money from INX Media, a company they founded but have since left.

To avoid being caught, a good deal of this money was transferred to their relatives' accounts. One of these may have belonged to Sheena, who later refused to return the money.

"Singapore-based Temasek invested in the the media company of the Mukerjeas and after the global recession, Temasek got the company audited. It was found that Peter and Indrani had siphoned off huge sums of money in the name of various family members," the news magazine reported.

Indrani has, in fact, reportedly admitted that she and Sheena had a dispute over money. She had transferred a huge amount of money to Sheena's account, but when she asked for it, her daughter refused to return it.

After Indrani married Peter, Sheena moved in with them. According to a family friend, she became close to Peter's son from an earlier marriage, Rahul. It is not clear whether this relationship played any role in Sheena's death.

Peter has admitted that Sheena had an affair with his son which Indrani did not approve of. He has, however, claimed that the two women used to converse in Assamese, so he did not understand them.

According to reports, Indrani has told the police that Sheena reminded her of the abuse she had suffered as a girl. They never got along and most of their conversations would end up in fights. She "hated" her daughter, Indrani has reportedly said.

Man who unlocked the mystery

The police have a lot to thank Ganesh Dhene for. A village official in Pen tehsil of Raigad, Dhene helped them locate the spot where Sheena was allegedly buried in 2012.

A team of police, forensic experts and villagers have since dug up some skeletal remains and a suitcase from the place.

The skeletal remains, however, were not linked with Sheena's case. For four months, the Mumbai police had kept Indrani under surveillance after a tip-off that she was involved in the "disappearance of her sister".

It was only after the arrest of her driver Shyam Rai in an unrelated case of possession of illegal arms that the connection was made. Rai was arrested on 21 August and during his interrogation, he revealed details about Sheena's murder.

Shocking conduct of the police

The police in Raigad didn't register a case of murder or accidental death when they found human remains, which later turned out to be Sheena's, in Pen tehsil on 23 May, 2012.

"Neither a crime nor a report of accidental death was registered when Raigad police sent the skeletal remains to J J Hospital in 2012," Raigad SP Suvez Haque admitted. "A station diary entry was made, but no Accidental Death Report was lodged. The inquiry will find out why an ADR was not registered."

The police did not even collect the report from the J J Hospital as required.

Now, the investigators have again dug up the remains and sent them to Kalina Central Forensic Lab for DNA testing.

The murder mystery though is far from solved.