Sheena murder: Judicial custody for three accused extended

Mumbai, Nov 20  A Mumbai magistrate on Friday extended the judicial custody of the three prime accused in the Sheena Bora murder case till December 3.

Simultaneously, the murder case has now been committed to a Special CBI Court which will hear the matter from next month.

The three accused are: the victim's mother Indrani Mukerjea, her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna and her former driver Shyamwar Rai.

They were arrested in the last week of August from Mumbai and Kolkata and have been in custody since then for nearly three months.

In a related development, the CBI on Thursday lodged a 1,000-page chargesheet against the accused trio in the court of Additional Metropolitan Magistrate R.V. Adone.

According to official sources, the chargesheet says that Sheena Bora was murdered in 2012 by her mother Indrani - wife of former media baron Peter Mukerjea, while her ex-husband Khanna and former driver Rai are the accomplices in the crime.

Hours after the chargesheet was lodged, the CBI on Thursday evening arrested Peter Mukerjea who is now the fourth accused in the case.

Earlier, the case was investigated by the Mumbai police. But in mid-September, the Maharashtra government handed it over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which has been probing it since.

According to investigators, Sheena Bora, 24, an employee with a private company in Mumbai, was allegedly strangulated in a car on the night of April 24, 2012.

Her body was taken in the vehicle to an isolated spot in the forests near Gagode village in adjacent Raigad district, around 80 kms south of Mumbai.

They poured petrol over it and set it afire and dumped her half-burnt body in the thick bushes from where it was found on May 23, a month later by a local villager.

Subsequently, forensic and other tests have confirmed that the remains found in the forests are of Sheena Bora.