Witness tells court Sheena’s fiancé Rahul Mukerjea ignored advice to file missing complaint after her disappearance

A witness revealed in court that Sheena Bora's fiancé ignored legal advice to report her missing in 2012, despite her troubled family dynamics.

MUMBAI: A day after Sheena Bora’s childhood friend told a special CBI court that the 24-year-old had once spoken of renouncing worldly life to escape constant turmoil and her strained relationship with her mother Indrani Mukerjea, the same witness on Friday revealed that Sheena’s fiancé Rahul Mukerjea ignored legal advice to act when she went missing in April 2012.

A file photo of Rahul Mukerjea and Sheena Bora. (PTI Photo)

Deposing before special CBI judge J P Darekar, witness Sanjana Phukan Raktim said her cousin, a Supreme Court lawyer, had categorically advised Rahul to lodge a missing person’s complaint and even offered to file a habeas corpus petition on his behalf. “My cousin brother offered help to Rahul but he never took it,” Raktim told the court during cross-examination by defence lawyer Ranjeet Sangle.

According to the CBI, Sheena was strangled on April 24, 2012, allegedly by Indrani with the help of her former husband Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamvar Rai. Her body was burnt and dumped in a Raigad forest, the crime surfacing only in 2015 after Rai’s confession in another case.

Raktim’s testimony shed light on the fractured dynamics within Sheena’s family. She recalled that during her wedding in Guwahati, Sheena chose not to stay at her maternal grandparents’ house, where tensions with them and her brother Mikhail ran high, and instead lived with another friend, Pranami Goswami. She said her grandmother even mentioned that Mikhail’s girlfriend was living in the house at the time. While there “may have been” a property dispute between Sheena and Mikhail, Raktim insisted Sheena was “not a greedy person” but suggested her brother “might have been.”

She also narrated unusual claims made by Mikhail years later. Between 2013 and 2015, he allegedly told her in a conference call that Sheena was alive and confined by Indrani in a Pune rehabilitation centre, and sought their help in rescuing her. Raktim said she initially considered tracing Sheena through a psychologist but later dismissed the account as implausible.

The witness admitted that despite Rahul’s account of dropping Sheena at Amarsons in Bandra on April 24, 2012, she never contacted Indrani directly about Sheena’s disappearance and instead trusted Rahul’s version. “Rahul never told me he picked Sheena up later that night,” she said, adding that both Rahul and Mikhail stopped being in touch with her after 2012.

Her testimony also touched on Sheena’s personal life. Until 2009, she believed Sheena was still with her former boyfriend, Kaustav, and only later learnt she was living with Rahul. She recalled emails in which Sheena described the “drama” in her life and her desire to take sanyas. She also said Sheena had once messaged her about breaking up with Rahul and “finding someone else.”

On Thursday, Raktim had testified that Sheena accused Indrani of harassment and even claimed she had been wrongly medicated on her mother’s instructions in 2009. “She told me Indrani tried to get her out of her job through contacts and even stopped her salary. She (Sheena) tried hard and somehow managed to save her job,” Raktim told the court.