as the trial proceeds, Peter is beginning to look more and more haggard while Indrani by contrast is blossoming. Khanna appeared exhausted and more down and out than usual at this hearing.

'I have strong reasons to believe that Accused number 4 (A4) Pratim Mukerjea with the assistance of other persons, including Accused no 3 (A3) turned approver Shyamwar Pinturam Rai may have conspired and abducted my daughter Sheena in 2012 and made her untraceable and subsequently destroyed evidence.'

'If I have to write a letter I will give it to the media. They will put it out.'

It is becoming more and more apparent that Shyamvar Rai is like an onion. And a pretty pungent one at that. As layer after layer of his life gets peeled off, in full view of the court, new layers of his character are exposed.

Without a moment of hesitation, Rai jumped up on his rickety wooden stool in the witness box. He then drew his legs close to his body and wrapped his arms around his knees and finally tucked his head into his knees demonstrating the fetal position.

If Pasbola seemed like he was testing Rai on his high school physics, Rai on the other hand, had relocated himself to a classroom of philosophy, offering beautifully inexact answers, arrived at after deep thinking.

Sherin Mathew left her hometown in Bihar in late 2015 for a new home in America.

Seeing Indrani in court with her perpetually sunny demeanour and beaming face is sometimes as unreal an experience as making sense of court delays.

Patrick French, who profiled Nupur and Rajesh Talwar and the case against them in his book India, A Portrait, speaks to Rediff.com about their acquittal.

Back to Sheena Bora's grave, via e-time travel

It turned out that Indrani, who was wearing the Navratri Day 2 green, was fasting for the festival. That caused the impish CBI prosecutor Badami to ask her police detail, "looking for salvation?".

As the weeks go by in this trial, it has emerged that Shyamvar Rai is that rare species of driver whose knowledge of distances, directions and routes surprisingly would not even fill the back of a postage stamp.

'If you have never seen Kangana Ranaut on screen before, and instead know more about her in real life and the spirited controversies that seem to happily follow her about, you realise that the actress puts a lot of herself into a screen role, feels Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.

There it lay, a photograph on the desk under a stapler, and later a stamp pad, forgotten, done with, like its subject, a Mumbai Metro One employee who vanished overnight.

Not Mekhail. Not Rahul. Not anyone. 'Wouldn't someone have asked?' Indrani asked.

Does the food jargon found in cookbooks or on restaurant menus defeat you? Well, brush it up then...

Lawyer: 'Did YOU not ever feel scared?' Shyamvar Rai: 'I am a driver, I said okay. Madam said it is your job...'

'I kept photographs of everyone. Because I was working for them.' 'Madam, Saab...' Shyamvar Rai, the approver in the case, said in a tone that tried to suggest that that would be a routine practice for a driver.

Raja Chari is in training to go to space in 2019. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel presents the story of his journey from Cedar Falls, Iowa, to NASA. A Rediff.com Exclusive!

The attempts to unearth the document started getting more and more frantic. The clerks began to flip pages of files full of documents, some hand written, some bearing thick seals or multiple stamps, some in Hindi, some in Marathi. Several junior lawyers joined in, perusing different files and dockets. But in spite of the best of efforts the document was not to be found.