4 weeks’ time to arrange sureties
MUMBAI: A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Thursday granted four more weeks to former media executive Indrani Mukerjea to furnish one or two solvent sureties of Rs 2 lakh for her bail.
This came after Mukerjea, who is facing trial for killing her daughter Sheena Bora, pleaded she was unable to furnish them as her phone was confiscated by the CBI and she lost almost all her contacts with the people she knew personally.
The Supreme Court on May 18 granted bail to Mukerjea primarily because she had spent six-and-half years behind bars and the trial was unlikely to conclude soon.
The next day the special CBI court in Mumbai ordered Mukerjea to be released on furnishing a personal bond of Rs 2 lakh and one or two sureties of the same amount. Accepting her lawyer Sana Raees Khan’s request, the special court granted Mukerjea two weeks to furnish the sureties. She was provisionally allowed to be released on cash bail of Rs 2 lakh.
On June 1, when the period of two weeks ended, Mukerjea again moved the special court pleading for time to furnish the sureties. On Thursday, Khan pointed out that Mukerjea was “unable to furnish surety within the two weeks granted by the court, as her phone was confiscated by the CBI and since she come out of jail after six-and-half years, her contacts had been broken with the people she knew.”
The lawyer had urged the court to grant her eight more weeks to furnish the sureties.
Mukerjea was in jail since August 25, 2015, and came out on bail on May 20, 2022. The CBI took over the investigation in September 2015.