In a handwritten application made before a special court on Monday, prime accused in the Sheena Bora murder case Indrani Mukerjea has claimed that it is police inspector Asha Korke who was the jail inmate who told her that she had met Sheena in Srinagar.
Mukerjea, who is in custody since 2015 in the murder case, made the plea through her lawyer. Korke is in custody in an extortion case of a developer, in which she is a co-accused of former city police chief Param Bir Singh. Indrani has sought in her application that the court seek a reply from the Central Bureau of Investigation on the steps it has taken after she wrote a letter to its Director in Nov-end informing of the development. She also sought that it calls Korke and record her statement on her claim, but did not press this prayer presently.
Giving details of her conversation with Korke, Indrani states in her application that Korke approached her in prison and said that she had crucial information on her daughter. The police inspector is said to have told Indrani that she had suppressed the information since June 2021 and had ‘felt guilty’ for it.
The plea says that Korke revealed to her that she had seen a familiar-looking young woman at Dal Lake and recognized her as Sheena Bora. The policewoman purportedly approached Sheena and called her by name, to which Sheena responded. Indrani’s application states that Korke then introduced herself to Sheena and persuaded her to come forward that she is alive as her parents were being incarcerated for her murder. “I have started my new life. I do not wish to return to my old life,” Sheena is said to have replied to her. Sheena had hurriedly left with a man who appeared to be a foreigner who came on a bike, Indrani further claims that Korke told her.
She said Korke said she did not want to get involved in the matter and hence had not reported about it to the police earlier. That, the policewoman felt she had made a grave mistake by not disclosing it earlier and that it is due this that she had to come to prison and face her as an accused in another matter and hence had chosen to do the right thing.
Indrani said compelling evidence had come on record during the trial which gave reason to believe that Sheena was alive after the alleged day of her murder on April 24, 2012. She said she had written to the CBI’s director Subodh Jaiswal and that Korke had thereafter even told her the exact date and approximate time when she had met Sheena in June 2021.
“...this trial cannot and should not be pursued any longer for the murder of Ms Sheena Bora when Ms Asha Korke has met and spoken with her…” the plea stated, adding in another part, “As I am still in the dark a month after a month of informing the CBI and am extremely eager and anxious to know what action the CBI has taken or is proposing to take, I have approached the honourable court to seek a reply from the CBI…Justice delayed is justice denied.”
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