Rejecting Peter Mukerjea’s bail application for the second time, the special CBI judge held that Peter should have helped his son Rahul Mukerjea lodge a complaint if he was concerned about Sheena Bora
Rejecting Peter Mukerjea’s bail application for the second time, the special CBI judge held that Peter should have helped his son Rahul Mukerjea lodge a complaint if he was concerned about Sheena Bora going missing. The judge considered similar statements of witnesses which had already been considered while rejecting Peter’s first bail plea and said that Peter’s “conduct” of not helping his son file a complaint with police about the deceased going missing also went against him.
“Rahul was in touch with the police, asking them to take a report regarding the deceased having gone missing. However, during the said period, the applicant did not extend any cooperation to him whatsoever. Certainly, if the applicant was also concerned about the deceased, at least he should have helped Rahul lodge a report regarding the deceased having gone missing,” observed special judge H.S. Mahajan while rejecting Peter’s second bail plea.
Both defence and prosecution have relied on SMSs and emails. According to the prosecution, these messages show that Peter was involved in the conspiracy while defence claims vice versa. However, the judge did not take them into consideration while deciding the bail plea saying that these materials could not be read in evidence before recording of evidence.
Apart from Rahul, the court also considered statements of Pradeep Waghmare, who was Peter’s servant at the time and Kajal Sharma, Indrani Mukerjea’s secretary. According to prosecution, Ms Sharma had created an email account in the name of Sheena Bora which later, Indrani allegedly used to send emails to friends and relatives to make them believe that Sheena was still alive. Mr Waghmare in his statement said that once, Peter told him over the phone that Sheena had been stolen from Rahul. Prosecution claims that Peter was speaking about Sheena’s murder while defence claims that he meant that Sheena and Rahul had been separated.
The judge held that the fact cannot be overlooked that a single act on Peter’s part was sufficient to hold him guilty in the matter. The judge did not discuss anything about Ms Sharma’s statement as further investigation in this regard is underway. The judge did not consider SMSs, emails and phone calls between Peter and Indrani. The court however said, “The phone calls made by Indrani from the jurisdiction of town Khalapur (where the body was disposed of), that too at odd hours, certainly goes against the applicant.”
