The CBI filed a charge sheet in a court here on Thursday against the three prime accused in the sensational Sheena Bora murder case.The charge sheet by the Central Bureau of Investigation, running into around 1,000 pages, was submitted in the court of Additional Metropolitan Magistrate (Ms.) R.V. Adone.The three prime accused named in the charge sheet are Sheena's mother Indrani Mukerjea, Indrani's ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna and her former driver Shyamvar Rai.According to official sources, the charge sheet says Sheena was murdered in 2012 by her mother Indrani -- wife of former media baron Peter Mukerjea -- while her ex-husband Khanna and former driver Rai were accomplices in the crime.
The trio was arrested from Mumbai and Kolkata in August and have been in custody since August 25.Earlier, the case was investigated by Mumbai police, but in September, the Maharashtra government handed it over to the CBI which has been probing it since.After the case was transferred to it, the CBI lodged a case against the accused trio charging them with kidnapping, murder, criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence, attempt to murder, etc.Filed within the mandatory 90 days, the charge sheet includes around 200 documents as evidence and statements of around 150 witnesses.
The accused trio has been in continuous custody of Mumbai police and then in judicial custody and now in CBI custody since nearly three months.According to investigators, Sheena, 24, an employee with a private company in Mumbai, was strangulated in a car on the night of April 24, 2012.Her body was taken in the vehicle to an isolated spot in the forests near Gagode village in adjacent Raigad district, around 80 km south of Mumbai.The trio poured petrol over the body and set it afire before dumping the half-burnt remains in the thick bushes from where it was found on May 23, a month later by a local villager.Subsequently, forensic and other tests have confirmed that the remnants found in the forests were of Sheena.