Court rejects Indrani Mukerjea’s plea for Peter’s CDR

Mumbai: A special CBI court conducting trial in the April 2012 Sheena Bora murder case on Thursday rejected an application filed by prime accused Indrani Mukerjea. She had sought her husband, co-accused Peter Mukerjea’s phone’s call detail record (CDR).

Special CBI judge J.C. Jagdale while rejecting the application filed by Indrani held that the allegations against Peter were withdrawn by Indrani during the arguments on this application and hence there was no ground to seek the CDR.

Indrani, in her application had claimed that she had reasons to believe that her husband Peter might have abducted her daughter Sheena Bora and had caused her disappearance. She had also alleged that Peter, with the help of others had created such circumstances that had resulted in her arrest.

However, during arguments, her lawyer told the court that the allegations levelled against co-accused Peter were a result of an emotional outburst and he is not pressing for those allegations. Though he had requested the judge to decide on providing Peter’s CDR.

While dealing with this subject in his order, judge Jagdale observed, “Judicial orders are not passed on pleas moved under emotional outburst.”

According to the judge, for making use of the allegations in the application against a co-accused should be a confession of own. Such exculpatory (evidence that helps clear a defendant of guilt and blames it on others) of co-accused as such can’t be used to infer guilt of co-accused. In the present case, applicant Indrani didn’t confess her guilt. Relying on a high court judgement of Mohammed Shakir Shaikh v/s state of Maharashtra, the judge said that Indrani’s application does not amount to confession and is partly exculpatory and cannot be used against a co-accused.

In such circumstances the judge said that the defence couldn’t get into shoes of prosecution and divert the case.