Mumbai: Indrani disputes Sheena’s birth certificate

Indrani Mukerjea, accused in the murder case of her daughter Sheena Bora, on Wednesday disputed the authenticity of a birth certificate of Sheena issued in 2002 in which Sheena’s grandparents are shown as her parents.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has relied on two birth certificates of Sheena - one in which Indrani and her then partner Siddharta Das are shown as parents and another prepared later, allegedly on Indrani’s instructions. Indrani argued that there is no record of the later one with Guwahati’s municipal corporation as per her inquiry.

During the recent testimony of Rahul Mukerjea, a key witness in the case, the CBI had also played recordings from a CD of phone conversations between Rahul and his father and Indrani’s co-accused Peter Mukerjea. The agency alleges that Peter was part of the conspiracy with Indrani and led Rahul to believe that Sheena was away in the US, while she was already murdered. The defence disputed the contents of the CD and said that proper process was not followed to be able to rely on it as evidence. The defence also contended that the transcript of the recordings was not provided to them and the CD was merely played in court.

The court on Wednesday also heard Indrani’s arguments on her plea to be permitted to cross-examine Rahul Mukerjea personally. Indrani told the court that her advocate is busy on the allotted date and since her bail conditions require that she does not seek adjournments, she would not want to take the risk of delaying the trial on that account.