Sheena murder case: Mikhail says his mother tried to kill him

Mumbai - Sheena Bora's brother tells police that their mother Indrani Mukerjea drugged him just hours before Sheena was killed.

The sensational Sheena Bora murder case took a new turn with the victim's younger brother, Mikhail - who was flown down to Mumbai from Guwahati - telling the police that his mother Indrani had drugged him just hours before Sheena was killed.
Mikhail, who has been telling the media in the Assamese capital that he would reveal a lot to the authorities, told the police here on Friday night that he had been called to Mumbai by Indrani Mukerjea in April 2012.
He was staying at the same hotel where Sanjeev Khanna, his mother's second husband - who has also been arrested along with Indrani and her driver Shyam Rai - had checked in on April 24. His mother and her ex-husband (she had divorced Sanjeev by then and had married Peter Mukerjea, the then CEO of Star TV India -had wanted to discuss some property related issues with Mikhail and Sheena, he had been told.
Accusing Indrani of wanting to murder him, he said she had laced his drink with some drugs and left him in the room. She later picked up her daughter from near a Bandra college. While Sheena refused to enter the car on seeing Sanjeev, she was allegedly dragged in and later strangled to death. The next day, her body was taken to a forest about 100km south of here and burnt there with the driver Shyam pouring petrol on it. Mikhail told the police that he, however, got up and managed to walk out of the room before his mother and her former husband could return to the hotel.
While the police have arrested the three persons for murdering Sheena, they are still trying to find out the motive behind the killing.
The over-ambitious Indrani, who had told a former colleague of hers that she had been molested as a child by her step-father in Guwahati, has been walking in and out of marriages.
She had also disowned two of her children from her first husband, claiming them to be her younger sister and brother. Her daughter from her second marriage had been adopted by Peter Mukerjea.
The police, who on Friday recovered the remains of a body that had been buried in the forests of Raigad district by the local police three years ago, have also recovered the car that was used to transport the victim's body. The bones and other skeletal remains have been sent for forensic analysis.
The police have also brought all three alleged killers together and confronted them with the evidence. They were also taken to the spot in Raigad where the body was dumped. The police also produced Mikhail before Indrani, where the two got involved in a battle of words.
Peter Mukerjea's son Rahul - from another marriage - is also being quizzed by the cops. Rahul was in a relationship with Sheena, but Indrani was opposed to it. Rahul had accompanied Sheena to meet Indrani on the fateful night when she was killed, but he was asked to leave by the latter.
Indrani later told him that Sheena had cut off all relationship with him and had gone to the US. When Rahul went to lodge a missing person complaint with the police, Indrani told the police that she had gone to the US as he was stalking her. Strangely, Sheena's passport was with him.
Considering the strange twists and turns in the case, the police are not ruling out the role of any of the key players in the murder mystery, which continues to get murkier by the day. - nithin@khaleejtimes.com

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