Drama queen Indrani says her life is 'unsafe' in prison

Indrani Mukherjea, prime accused in the Sheena Bora case, on Monday played the ‘victim’ card and made a shocking revelation before a special court. She claimed that someone is hatching a conspiracy to kill her in the jail. However, a CBI officer trashed her contention saying that she is only building up a 'ground' for bail.

The claim was made by Indrani when she was produced before the court after her insistence that she would attend the trial in the Sheena Bora case.

Having been allowed to step in the witness box, Indrani sang like a canary and told special Judge JC Jagdale that her life is ‘unsafe’ in prison and someone is planning to kill her.

The revelation was made in the context of the drug overdose incident, for which she was rushed to the State-run JJ Hospital, earlier this month. It was the second such incident in the last three years of her jail term as an undertrial.

Narrating her ‘ordeal,’ Indrani said, “I fear for my life in prison. Someone is planning to kill me but I do not know who that person is. This is the second time I was hospitalised due to an overdose of medicines, I do not know if I would be able to bear a third such incident. I have not spoken to Inspector General (Prisons) on this yet. I will get my statements recorded soon,” Indrani told the court.

Interestingly, Indrani has indirectly blamed Byculla jail authorities. She apprised the court of the sequence of events before she fell unconscious on April 7 morning.

“I was observing a fast on April 6, when I was last produced before this court. Since it was my fast, I had not eaten anything since morning. Also, I did not speak to anyone in jail and in the court, I only talked with my advocates. After being taken

back to jail, I was given Benzodiazepine tablets in the evening and nearly half an hour later I was served with a bowl of daal. I consumed the daal and soon after that started feeling giddy,” Indrani recounted in the court.

“It was only on April 7 morning that I fell unconscious and was rushed to the hospital. This is the second time that there has been an overdose of these medicines. I fear such an incident may be repeated again,” Indrani added.

Before stepping out of the witness box, Indrani informed the special court that she would be filing a detailed application in this regard on Tuesday through her counsel Gunjan Mangla.

Meanwhile, Indrani's former manager Kajal Sharma, who deposed before the court, refuted claims of the prosecution that she spoke to Peter Mukherjea on the phone and impersonated Sheena Bora. The prosecution had till date maintained that Kajal spoke to Peter by impersonating Sheena. Also, she did so on the instructions of her boss Indrani.

However, on Monday, Kajal told the court that she had never given any such statement to the CBI and learnt of the same through media reports. She said, "Soon after reading the news, I approached the CBI office and clarified the same," Kajal told the court.

On Tuesday, Kajal would be cross-examined by her exboss Indrani.