Sheena’s dad in Mumbai, Peter quizzed again; car traced

MUMBAI: Peter Mukerjea, former CEO of Star India, was questioned for the second consecutive day by Khar police in connection with the Sheena Bora murder case on Thursday. While he had been quizzed for 12 hours the previous day, the second day’s questioning lasted over 11 hours.
Siddhartha Das, the biological father of Sheena and Mikhail Bora, was brought to the city from Kolkata and taken to Khar police station for recording his statement.His blood was taken for DNA profiling.
Police sources, meanwhile, said that the bones exhumed from the jungles of Pen in Raigad district belong to a young woman aged between 20 and 25 years. The analysis of bones and skull, suspected to be that of Sheena, was done by doctors at BYL Nair Hospital in Mumbai Central.
The car used in the crime was recovered on Thursday, and the police continued to claim that Indrani Mukerjea had confessed to the crime.
Police have now roped in a couple of chartered accountants to help them understand the financial details they have obtained from Peter Mukerjea to know if money and/or inheritance was the motive for the killing. An investigator told TOI on condition of anonymity that the police would inform other agencies if they found any irregularities in Peter’s books of accounts. And though the police have prima facie ruled out the involvement of Peter in the crime, they are probing if he had knowledge of it.
Police said there were reports that when Peter and Indrani exited from INA Media in 2009, they received funds from the sale, of which a major share was placed in Sheena’s accounts. In Sheena’s absence, this money would be divided between Indrani and Vidhie, Indrani and Sanjeev Khanna’s daughter, now adopted by Peter. “We are verifying how the money was distributed among the family members,” a police officer said.
Peter on Thursday arrived at the Khar police station along with his CA and bank statements, documents pertaining to the registration of companies and the books of his various companies.
After he had given out financial details, the police asked him if he had any knowledge of Sheena’s murder or if he had suspected anything amiss when Sheena went missing on April 24, 2012, and whether he had suspected that Indrani was misleading him by saying that Sheena had left for the US. He was asked about the fact that Rahul had told him he felt something was wrong. Peter reportedly replied that Rahul had indeed informed him about Sheena’s disappearance but when he asked Indrani about it, she convinced him that Sheena had settled in the US. Peter also said there was a heated argument between him and Rahul over Sheena’s disappearance, and after that, Rahul had stopped talking to him.
The police had on Wednesday given Peter a written questionnaire containing 25 questions. On Thursday, similar questions were posed to him orally and his answers tallied with those he had given the previous day, both orally and in writing.
The police escorted Indrani’s one-time partner Das to the Khar police station at around 8.10pm. A police team had reached Das’s Kolkata home on Wednesday in order to get him to Mumbai. “His statement has been recorded and his sample taken for a DNA test,” an investigator told TOI.
Indrani’s ex-husband Khanna and her driver Shyamvar Rai were questioned in other rooms in the police station at the same time that Peter and Das were present there. Thus, Indrani’s husband, her ex-husband and Mikhail’s biological father were in the Khar police station at the same time on Thursday.
The car used in the crime was recovered from a person in Nashik. AM Motors, who had given the car on a rental basis to Indrani in 2012, had told the police that they had sold the car to a dealer and the dealer had in turn sold it to someone else. Police said they were certain that it was the same car in which Sheena was strangled and her body taken for dumping to Raigad.