Mumbai: Mumbai police are verifying the statements of her mother, INX Media ex-CEO Indrani Mukerjea, and the driver Shyam Rai. They are talking to her boyfriend Rahul Mukerjea, son of Indrani’s third husband Peter Mukerjea. And they are waiting to question Indrani’s second husband Sanjeev Khanna who has been arrested in Kolkata.
But so far investigators have not been able to piece together anything conclusive about the murder mystery.
What is more or less clear, according to sources, is that Sheena received a call from her mother on that day asking her to meet up and sort out their differences. There are two versions on what happened next.
According to the first, Rahul dropped her off in front of the National College in Bandra, which is near the flat they were living in. Indrani drove up in a car and asked Sheena to get in but she hesitated on seeing Khanna inside. Indrani then forced her daughter into the car and drove off.
The second version says Indrani called up Sheena while waiting outside the building where she lived in with Rahul and that she went down and joined her mother.
What happened after the car drove off with her is even more unclear.
One version says Indrani strangled Sheena inside the car while Khanna pinned down her hands and Rai held her legs. This could not have happened on the crowded roads of Mumbai, so police are inclined to believe that they may have driven straight to Raigad and killed her at the isolated spot where the body was found dumped.
Inside the Raigad forest, Rai allegedy smashed Sheena’s face with a rock and burnt the corpse with petrol to avoid identification.
Another narrative has it that the body was stacked away in the boot of the car, which was parked overnight in the garage of Mukerjeas’ Worli residence, before being dumped in Raigad the next day.
A day after he last saw her, Rahul reportedly got a text message from Sheena’s phone telling him she was breaking up the relationship. He then tried calling the number, but no one picked it up.
Rahul then went to the Khar police to register a complaint that she was missing. Some sources said he was then directed to the Worli station under which the Mukerjeas’ residence falls. The police officers at Worli apparently called up Indrani to ask about Sheena’s whereabouts and they were told she had left for the US.
Noone of this is confirmed yet. It is also curious why Rahul did not pursue the matter further.
These are among the questions police will be asking Peter. Also did he tell his father, Peter, about his suspicions? His answers will be crucial to the investigation.
