Media executive accused of murdering daughter she passed off as sister
Indian mother said to have been furious at victim starting relationship with her step-brother
WITH more twists and turns than the most outlandish Bollywood thriller, a saga of high society, wealth, sex, family deceit and murder that stretches from Mumbai to Bristol is gripping India.
A glamorous former media executive married to a British-born television mogul has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a daughter who, until this week, she had passed off as her sister.
Indrani Mukerjea, 43, is accused, along with her ex-husband and driver, of strangling Sheena Bora, dousing the body in petrol, setting it alight and burying the remains in a forest outside Mumbai in 2012.
A police forensic team yesterday dug up charred bones that they believe are the remains of Miss Bora after the accused driver led them to the scene.
As part of a reported cover-up, police have alleged that Mrs Mukerjea used Miss Bora’s telephone to send messages impersonating her daughter from Britain and America to say that she had moved to start a new life in the US.
As Mrs Mukerjea climbed through the ranks of India’s media elite, she had long introduced Miss Bora as her younger sister.
The accused woman has in recent years divided her time between homes in Mumbai, Spain and Bristol, where another daughter has been studying at university. Among those taken in by the subterfuge was Peter Mukerjea, her current husband and the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV network in India.
Mr Mukerjea, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, told NDTV that he was “dumbstruck” and shocked to learn that Miss Bora was his wife’s daughter. “I feel like I have been kept in the dark about major parts of my marriage for 15 years,” he said.
Mr Mukerjea, 59, was born in London to Indian parents who moved back to Mumbai when he was a baby.
He pursued a successful career in Britain and Asia with companies such as British Home Stores and Ogilvy & Mather, the PR agency, before working at Star India. It was there that he met his wife, an HR officer, and the couple married in a high-profile wedding in Mumbai in 2002. The couple have a £750,000 apartment on a private estate in the Sneyd Park area of Bristol.
Neighbours on the estate described Mrs Mukerjea as “sweet” and “friendly”. They said the Mukerjea family had not visited the property for a couple of years, but one neighbour suggested that Mrs Mukerjea was there for large parts of 2012, when the murder is thought to have taken place.
The neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: “They were very nice but kept themselves to themselves. They invited me over for a party once. She was very sweet and innocent-looking. I’m shocked at this. They used to give me a Christmas card every year.”
Police have told Indian media that Mrs Mukerjea has confessed to her role and said that she became pregnant with Miss Bora after her father raped her as a teenager. But Mrs Mukerjea’s lawyers have argued that she was “falsely implicated”.
When Miss Bora disappeared aged 22, she had been living with Mr Mukerjea’s son Rahul, his child from an earlier marriage. The step-siblings were not blood relatives, but their parents were reportedly furious about the relationship.
“It was an honour killing because Sheena was having an affair with Rahul, which was not liked by Indrani,” said Dhananjay Kulkarni, deputy police commissioner. But other media have quoted police sources saying that the alleged motive may have been a financial dispute or a threat by Miss Bora to reveal that she was Mrs Mukerjea’s daughter.
Mrs Mukerjea’s ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna, Miss Bora’s step-father, has also been arrested.