Chaff and Grain by Vivek Sood

Author:Vivek Sood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

On 24 April 2012, Sheena Bora took leave from her office. Her family claimed that she had gone abroad for further studies and hence no ‘missing complaint’ was filed. A month later, on 23 May, the police, during the course of the investigation, found the remnants of Sheena Bora’s body at a secluded spot in Maharashtra’s Raigad district. In November 2012, Peter Mukherjea, the then-husband of Indrani was arrested as a conspirator. Three years later, in August 2015, Indrani Mukherjea was arrested for the murder of her daughter Sheena. Indrani’s ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna too was arrested in Kolkata. Indrani’s driver Shyam Rai confessed to the murder in conspiracy with Indrani and Sanjeev Khanna. The accused were taken by the police to the spot where the burnt remnants of the body were found in order to recreate the crime scene. The charge sheet was filed by the CBI in 2016. They were accused of Sheena’s murder and several motives were attributed to them including Sheena’s relationship with her boyfriend, Rahul. Another theory is that Sheena had been threatening Indrani Mukherjea that she would reveal her controversial past. The CBI court charged Indrani Mukherjea and Sanjeev Khanna with criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, murder, destroying evidence and giving false information. The driver, Shyam Rai, was made an approver in the case, in other words, a witness for the prosecution upon being pardoned for his complicity in the crime.

Without going into the truthfulness of the accusations as the criminal trial is pending and facts will be revealed through evidence led by the prosecution and defence, let me come to the point.

The trial has been going on endlessly. The lower courts rejected the prayer of Indrani for release on bail, hence, the case went for appeal to the Supreme Court. It was argued that Indrani had spent over six years in jail and out of 237 witnesses cited by the prosecution, only 68 had deposed in evidence and moreover, the trial judge had been on leave from 7 June 2021 to 4 May 2022. The Supreme Court granted bail to Indrani, observing as follows:16

Taking into account the fact that the petitioner has been in custody for 6½ years and even if 50% of the remaining witnesses are given up by the prosecution, the trial will not complete soon, we are of the considered view that the petitioner is entitled to be released on bail.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.