The Bombay High Court on Wednesday rejected the bail plea of former media baron Peter Mukerjea, arrested in the 2012 murder case of Sheena Bora, his wife Indrani’s daughter from an earlier relationship.
Justice NV Sambre, who was hearing the plea, however, will record the reasons for having rejected the plea on Thursday.
Earlier, a Sessions court too had rejected his bail plea on two separate occasions.
Justice Sambre had told Peter’s lawyers on Tuesday that since the bail was rejected by Special CBI court earlier after which the supplementary chargesheet was filed, so in the light of new evidence Peter’s bail application should be filed before the lower court again.
However, Peter’s lawyer Abaad Ponda had argued emphasising that the lower court is bound to reject it. He had told the court that “when there was only A (second chargesheet) he rejected it. Now there is A and B (second and third chargesheet), he is bound to reject it.”
In his bail plea, Peter refuted the CBI’s contention that he and Indrani hatched the conspiracy to murder Sheena as they were against her relation with Rahul Mukerjea, Peter’s son from his first marriage.
His lawyer Aabad Ponda argued that Peter had no hatred towards Sheena and that he was fooled by Indrani and kept in the dark.
“Peter only objected to Rahul and Sheena living together without getting married and when jobless. But when he came to know later that they both got engaged, he sent a message to Rahul giving them his blessings,” Ponda argued.
He further claimed that Peter was kept in the dark by Indrani, who claimed that Sheena was alive and had fled from the country.
“Peter was fooled by Indrani till 2013 that Sheena was alive and was in some foreign country. Peter had no clue. He was a henpecked husband who just agreed to what his wife said,” Ponda argued on Wednesday.
Mukerjea in his plea said that an officer can “write anything” in a further probe which has no deadline and it is unfair to keep a man indefinitely behind bars based on such “further probe” and not consider his arguments on the lack of any case against him.
Peter Mukerjea was arrested on the day the CBI filed its first chargesheet against Indrani, her second husband Sanjeev Khanna and her former driver Shyamwar Rai accusing all three of being in the car and killing Sheena on April 24, 2012 before dumping her body in a forest near Mumbai when Mukerjea was abroad in UK.
