A tale of greed, ambition & murder

Sandeep Sinha

Let every eye negotiate for itself

And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch

Against whose charms faith melteth in blood.

—William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)

THE Sheena Bora case hogged the headlines involving as it did a high-profile media tycoon and his ambitious wife for whom means justified the end. Indrani Bora, a small-town girl, uses a practical approach to life, to escape from the confines of Guwahati to the slick company of the glitterati in Mumbai and Delhi. Smitten by Siddhartha Das, she marries him in the first flush of youth, only to dump him when she discovers he will not be able to meet her aspirations. The children, Sheena and Mikhail, are left in the custody of Indrani’s parents.

Unburdened by the fetters of her past, she moves to Calcutta where she marries Sanjeev Khanna, who, she thinks, is her passport to a better future. Khanna, with whom she has a daughter, Vidhie, introduces her to the world of the rich and the influential at the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club. Indrani soon launches her own venture and moves to Mumbai. A chance meeting with Peter Mukerjea, the CEO of Star TV network, at the Library Bar of Hotel President in the company of men like Alyque Padamsee and Suhel Seth, changes her life forever.

She dumps Sanjeev Khanna, and takes custody of Vidhie, threatening to file a dowry case against Khanna.

She marries Peter Mukerjea notwithstanding their 17-year age difference. While Khanna has been taken care of, Indrani fears the burden of her two children from her first marriage will affect her prospects. So, she agrees to take up the responsibility for their education but on the condition that they treat her as their elder sister in public and not their mother.

What follows is a spine-chilling tale of greed and ambition. The book portrays Indrani driven by her hunger for wealth and power and Peter Mukerjea as an indulgent husband, who, despite being cautioned by his son Rahul not to trust her, believes there could be nothing sinister about his wife.

Rahul begins to get close to Sheena. Indrani resents this closeness. Fearing a division of property and that her secret that Sheena is her daughter and not her younger sister, Indrani allegedly kills Sheena, dumping her body in the forests of Raigad. She manages to keep the murder under wraps for three years, telling people that Sheena has moved to the US. However, Sheena’s passport is eventually found at Rahul’s home nailing Indrani’s lie. The discovery of her skeleton by a police informer brings to light the horrendous crime.

The reader is in shock and awe at the meticulous mind of Indrani and the steel in her. Manish Pachouly has produced an absorbing account of burning ambition that doesn’t stop even at murder.

While the jury is still out with Indrani doing a volte-face and accusing Peter of committing the crime, the research behind the book is evident. Pachouly has done his homework well.

The story behind the launch of NewsX channel has a ring of truth to it. The e-mail to Peter Mukerjea by Narendra Nag, a promising youngster who was once a colleague, and the circumstances in which senior journalist Avirook Sen, who went on to write a book on the murder of Aarushi Talwar, have been corroborated by different sources.

The saga also reminds one of a similar high-profile marriage, that of Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar, that ended in her tragic and mysterious death.

The writer has quoted extensively from the works of William Shakespeare, notably Macbeth, to draw a parallel between Indrani and Lady Macbeth.

The CBI hit a dead end in the Aarushi case. Will the Sheena Bora case, mired in the maze of legal system, be any different?