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Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria tonight said the police have a fair idea of the motive behind the murder of Sheena Bora but declined to elaborate saying the "third accused" (Sanjeev Khanna) was yet to be interrogated.
"We have a fair idea of the motive of the murder. However, the third accused (Khanna, a former husband of Sheena's mother Indrani Mukherjea) is yet to reach Mumbai and to be interrogated. Only then, we will be able to tell you about the motive," Maria told reporters after a day-long interrogation of Indrani, her driver and Rahul Mukherjea at the suburban Khar police station.
To a question whether the police had confirmed if Sheena was Indrani's sister (as the latter had made people believe) or her daughter, Maria said "Sheena is the daughter of the lady accused."
The police commissioner also said the investigators on Thursday recorded the statement of the accused who signed as Sheena on the letters prepared by the "lady accused" informing the company in Mumbai where Sheena worked that she was resigning, and also Sheena's landlord that she was ending her lease and license agreement.
Asked if the police will interrogate Indrani's third husband (media baron Peter Mukherjea), Maria said "we will do a complete investigation. It is just 48 hours now....let the third accused come, then we will be able to tell you about the motive."
During the day, Maria himself was involved in the questioning of Indrani, her driver, and her stepson Rahul Mukherjea. Indrani's own son Mikhail was questioned in Guwahati and her former husband Sanjeev Khanna in Kolkata.
The driver S P Rai and Khanna are believed to have told police that Indrani, wife of former Star CEO Peter Mukherjea, had done a recce of the place in Raigad district (near Mumbai) where Sheena's body was to be dumped a day before the murder on April 24, 2012.
Mukherjea, who had on Wednesday claimed that he knew Sheena only as his wife's sister, on Thursday made a U turn saying Sheena had told him that she was Indrani's daughter.
When he confronted Indrani with what Sheena had told him, she dubbed it as "utter rubbish", he told a news channel.
He also claimed that Indrani had shown him an e-mail in which Sheena had purportedly stated that she wanted to end love affair with Rahul, Mukherjea's son from earlier marriage.
Indrani's father Upendra Kumar Bora disputed his daughter's claim that murdered Sheena Bora was his daughter.
"Sheena is not my daughter. I am her grandfather," said 80-year-old Bora whose name was said to have been given by Indrani as father in the birth certificate of Sheena who was born in February, 1989.
Khanna, who had divorced Indrani, is believed to have told the Mumbai police in Kolkata that he was in the car in which Sheena was allegedly strangulated but claimed to have slept during the crime.
This apparently contradicted the arrested driver's claim before police that Indrani and Khanna had strangulated Sheena in the car after giving her a spiked drink in a hotel room in Mumbai.
Then the body was taken to a village in Pen tehsil of Raigad where it was burnt with petrol. Khanna had reportedly come to Mumbai on April 23, 2012, a day before the murder and took a flight back to Kolkata on April 25, according to police sources.
Image: Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria coming out from the Khar police station after investigation of the sensational Sheena Bora murder case, in Mumbai on Thursday. Photograph: Santosh Hirlekar/ PTI