The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday said former media mogul Peter Mukerjea, arrested on Thursday, was “found to be involved in a criminal conspiracy with his wife” to murder her daughter from her first husband, Sheena Bora, and tried to mislead his son from his previous marriage, Rahul, by misinforming him that she was alive and well in the US after her death on April 24, 2012.
Sheena and Rahul were engaged, and Peter is Indrani’s third husband, while she is his second wife. The CBI’s main focus was on several long telephonic conversations it said Peter had with Indrani while he was still in UK before, during and after the killing, to indicate his involvement and accused him of removing Sheena’s phone and ATM card from her purse after her death to destroy evidence.
Magistrate R V Adone at Esplanade court granted the request for custody made by additional solicitor general Anil Singh who appeared for CBI. The court, however, gave three-day custody and not 14 days as sought by the agency after hearing Peter’s lawyer Niranjan Mundargi.
Mundargi sought a short date after first denying that custody was even required as it was no crime for a husband to speak to his wife over the phone. Mundargi said the arrest after the chargesheet “requires that facts be looked into to find out why they are now trying to create a case against him.” He also added, “Merely using words like conspiracy doesn’t mean that he was involved.”
The CBI late Wednesday evening arrested Peter and booked him for a case of murder, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence and kidnapping to murder barely a couple of hours after it had chargesheeted Indrani, her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamwar Rai.
Peter, who arrived at the court flanked by CBI officers during the lunch break, faced a closed door for a minute, something he may have face for a while now. The CBI produced him a little after the court had extended the custody of Indrani, Khanna and Rai till December 3 and committed the murder case to the special CBI sessions court for trial.
Indrani, looking older and pale, while leaving the court, repeatedly said she was “being framed”. The CBI had just served her with the 4,300-odd pages of chargesheet against her and others which said she had planned and executed a plot to eliminate her own daughter. Flanked by women cops, Indrani, 44, dressed in a blue and green salwar kameez, her hair un-dyed, sat on a court bench next to the media, and spoke non-stop with her lawyer Gunjan Mangala, a junior at Mahesh Jethmalani’s chamber. Khanna too, looking thinner, sat and chatted quietly with his cousin one bench away till they were called to receive the chargesheet copy, a little before the court lunch-break at 2pm. The driver spoke to no one.
After lunch, when the court resumed, Peter, who stood near the dock all through, his sons including Rahul and his brother Gautam and sister-in-law huddled elsewhere in the court, looked a little relieved when the matter was called out at 3pm. The magistrate, her voice very soft, asked him his name and age and if he had complaints with the way the CBI treated him. Peter said he had none.
After CBI lawyer Bharat Badami said the ASG would argue the remand plea, Singh said, “14 days’ custody is required to enable CBI to conduct further investigation to unearth the larger conspiracy, his role as well as the role of others and to recover Sheena’s items including the original will of the Delhi flat” that had initially been in Sheena’s name.
“We have records of his (Peter’s) phone calls. When she was killed and body was disposed of. The phone calls lasted 22 minutes and more. Calls were made both day and night,” Singh said.
“Durng interrogation he admitted that he had said he had spoken to Sheena over the phone after she was killed by Indrani. In this way he hatched the criminal conspiracy with Indrani,” said the CBI remand plea.
Singh added there were a number of suspected transactions of assets in Sheena’s name, which were withdrawn due to the strained relations between Indrani and her.
“There are also various financial transactions involved and he has businesses and residences in various states even abroad,” he pointed out.
Peter’s lawyer Mundergi said “without admitting to any conversation with his son, assuming Peter did have a conversation with him where he spoke about Sheena, it was to pacify Indrani and clear any misunderstanding between them, since Rahul and Sheena were seeing each other, which Indrani disapproved”. The lawyer stated that “he (Peter) was busy with his empire. He was a British national and when the actual incident took place he was in London. They say he was talking with his wife. Can you jump to any conclusion that he was involved based on conversation with his present wife? It can’t be used to mean Peter is involved in committing murder of Sheena. How does he gain anything from her death?”
Singh said the case against Peter was not just based on conversations. Peter wanted that Rahul should not know where Sheena is.