JOIN USPolice had not filed a FIR or an Accidental Death Report (ADR) when Sheena Bora’s body was found in a wooded forest in the Pen taluka of Maharashtra’s Raigad district on May 23, 2012.
The startling disclosure indicates either a mess-up or a cover-up. Though an entry in the Station Diary was made, the police chose to do a post-mortem (PM) examination of the remains at the site itself.
R D Shinde, then superintendent of police (SP) of Raigad district and currently additional commissioner of police (central region) in Mumbai, has come under the scanner, and is facing two probes: One initiated by DGP Sanjeev Dayal and another by Special Inspector General of Police (Konkan Range) Prashant Burude.
Sheena, then 24, was reportedly murdered on April 24, 2012, and her body dumped in the woods near the Gagode Budruk village in Pen off the Pen-Khopoli Road. Facing a barrage of questions from mediapersons on Saturday evening, Raigad SP Mohammed Suvez Haq said no FIR or ADR was filed after the body was recovered. “My superiors (DGP) have asked me to probe this, and I have prepared a factual report and sent it to them,” he said.
Possible lapses
Asked about possible lapses, he said: “IG-Konkan has asked me to probe it and I am probing it.” He said documents related to the probe in Raigad have been sent to the Mumbai Police.
Speaking about that day’s events, he said three Pen police personnel went to the spot after receiving information about the body. “The inquest panchnama and body panchnama was done, a doctor was called and the PM was conducted,” he said.
The body was subsequently buried, but not before samples were collected and sent to Sir JJ Hospital in Mumbai for examination, he said.
Sir JJ Group of Hospitals and Grant Medical College Dean Dr T P Lahane said on Friday: “We have not been able to determine the age, sex or cause of death of the person from the pieces of bones handed over to our hospital on May 25, 2012. I sent out a report to that effect to the Pen police on December 13, 2013. We had preserved the pieces of bones. Today (Saturday), officials from the Khar police station came and collected bones from us.”
On Friday, on the orders of Mumbai Police chief Rakesh Maria, a team of police officers and forensic experts had exhumed the remains of the body in Pen and sent samples to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory at Kalina in Mumbai for examination.