New Delhi/Mumbai: The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted bail to Indrani Mukerjea in the Sheena Bora murder case. The court said she has already undergone six and a half years in custody and the trial will not end soon.
The Court also noted that the other accused in the case, Indrani’s former husband Peter Mukherjea, is already on bail since February 2020. The court allowed Indrani to be released on bail subject to conditions on which Mukherjea was granted bail.
Indrani, prime accused in the murder of her daughter Sheena Bora, will have to stay in prison till at least May 20, despite the Supreme Court granting her bail, as the trial court will have to finalise her bail conditions. Her lawyer Sana Khan said she will move the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Mumbai, where her trial has been going on since 2017, to get bail conditions finalised and secure Indrani’s release.
In her plea, the 50-year-old told the top court that the trial would not end soon as 185 out of 253 witnesses in the case are yet to be examined. Moreover, the trial judge hearing her case was on leave from June 7, 2021 till May 4, 2022, further delaying the trial, the plea stated. She also claimed in the plea that being a woman and suffering from health issues, she deserved to be released on bail.
The prosecution, led by the CBI, had opposed the bail plea and informed the court that the trial will not take long as the prosecution will be giving up on 50% of the remaining witnesses.
In response, the bench, also comprising justices BR Gavai and AS Bopanna, said, “Admittedly the petitioner is in custody for six-and-a-half years… Even if 50% witnesses are given up, the trial will not be completed soon. We are of the view that the petitioner be released on bail subject to conditions fixed by the trial court.”
Indrani is currently lodged in the Byculla women’s prison in the city. She was arrested in August 2015 for her alleged involvement in strangling Bora, then 24, in 2012 and then burning her corpse and disposing of her body in a forest in Raigad. Indrani’s driver Shyamwar Rai and her former husband, Sanjeev Khanna, were also arrested for the crime. Mukerjea, to whom Indrani was married at the time — the couple got divorced in 2018 — was arrested in November 2015 after the CBI took over the investigation.
Indrani moved the Supreme Court in February after the Bombay high court (HC) denied her bail application for the second time. The special CBI court, where the trial has been ongoing since 2017, has refused her bail application on multiple occasions.
The CBI had opposed Indrani’s bail plea in the Supreme Court, and told the court in March that Indrani was accused of committing a heinous act of planning and killing her own daughter, and since she is an influential person, there was every apprehension that she will threaten, intimidate or induce the prosecution witnesses.
Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who appeared for Indrani along with advocate Sandeep Singh, told the court that while releasing Peter on bail, the trial judge directed him to deposit his passport (as he is a UK national) and intimate the special CBI court conducting the trial for travelling abroad. The other bail conditions on which he was released on bail required him to intimate CBI about any change in address, and to not influence witnesses, not tamper with evidence, avoid contact with his children, and regularly attend trial.
The top court directed that the conditions applicable to Mukerjea shall also apply to Indrani, in addition to any conditions ordered by the trial court.
Additional solicitor general (ASG) SV Raju, appearing for the CBI, opposed bail claiming that the charges were grave and the evidence directly pointed to Indrani’s guilt. He further informed the court that Indrani was accused of screening material and the evidence of Peter’s son Rahul Mukerjea (with whom Sheena was in a live-in relationship) was still to be recorded.
In her bail petition, Indrani had even suggested that a jail inmate told her that Sheena was alive. The CBI denied this in its affidavit filed before the top court and said the suggestion that Sheena is still alive is a “figment of imagination” of the petitioner.
(With inputs from Charul Shah and agencies)