Forged Sheena’s signature under pressure: Secretary

Mumbai: The secretary of key accused Indrani Mukerjea has told a court hearing the Sheena Bora murder case that she fabricated the signature of the deceased under duress from her employer.

Kajal Sharma, appearing as a witness, told the court on Tuesday that she had no other option but to obey Indrani to affix the signature to Sheena Bora’s false resignation from Reliance’s Mumbai Metro Company.

Ms Sharma said that on May 3, 2012, Indrani sent her three e-mails on her personal account. Two mails contained the resignation letter. One mail had a scanned signature of Sheena Bora and it directed her to practise the signature and sign on the resignation letter so that it could be sent to Sheena’s employer.

“I refused to copy Sheena’s signature but Indrani (who was out of India at that time) told me that Sheena was in the United States and she did not have access to internet and she did not have any other resources to send her resignation and asked me to help her,” said Ms Sharma, adding, “I was under compulsion to obey my boss (Indrani) and did not have any other option. So I practised Sheena’s signature, took a printout of her resignation and signed on it.”

According to Ms Sharma, as per Indrani’s instruction, she along with her colleague Pradeep Waghmare, sent the resignation through the Maruti Courier Service in Mulund, after ensuring that there were no security cameras.

A few days later, Indrani again made her sign on a deal of cancellation of leave and licence in Sheena’s name, Ms Sharma said.

The court later deferred the recording of Ms Sharma’s testimony until Monday after special public prosecutor Kavita Patil and Bharat Badami sought time to produce certain documents, which they wanted to show Ms Sharma.