Mumbai: For Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria, the challenges initially faced had been like solving a jigsaw puzzle. Ten days since the arrest of prime accused Indrani Mukerjea in the Sheena Bora murder case, Maria, whose role as the city’s police commissioner is due to be over on September 30, now has a different set of challenges facing him. After a web of lies, he now has to unravel a web of companies and this time, too, the cops have again blamed Indrani Mukerjea.
Sources close to the investigation say the Mumbai Police has now sought the help of experts in economic offences to find out where the money is that the Mukerjeas own and which could be a possible motive behind Sheena’s brutal murder. Since Thursday, chosen officers of Maria’s team have been shuttling between Khar police station and the offices of a number of chartered accountants and company secretaries, not only in Mumbai but in Kolkata too. The police are also trying to find out the role of two existing directors of various companies earlier owned by the Mukerjea couple. Around one year before Sheena’s murder, both Indrani and Pratim Mukerjea — that is Peter’s official name as registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs —handed over control of all these companies in a phased manner to two Kolkata-based businessmen, Nikate Khaitan and Pawan Kr Vaid, residents of the Ballygunge and Dumdum areas respectively. The help of the economic offences wing (EoW) of the Kolkata Police might also be sought this weekend to help their Mumbai counterparts solve the puzzle.
“During January to June 2011, most of the companies run by the Mukerjeas witnessed a change of guards. There surfaced Khaitan and Vaid, about whom not much information was available and the probe demands knowledge of their role while solving the financial maze. Interestingly, both of them are based in Kolkata and their equations with Indrani may be vital to work on the money trail,” said a source close to investigation of the case.
“The Ministry of Corporate Affairs does not have any record of Peter Mukerjea, which initially baffled the police. Then it was found that he owned all the companies till 2011 as Pratim Mukerjea holding DIN 00107918, while Indrani Pratim Mukerjea was holding DIN 00154635. No record is available about whether Sheena or Indrani-Sanjeev’s daughter, Vidhie, had been a part of any of the companies run by the Mukerjeas, while cops are in the dark about how much money the prime accused owns and where the money is now,” said the source.
Most of these companies have their registered office at 207, Embassy Centre, Nariman Point in Mumbai while some had offices in the Phoenix Mills compound too. This newspaper made several attempts to reach both Khaitan and Vaid but to no avail.
