Sheena Bora case: Bombay HC grants Peter Mukerjea bail

More than four years after he was arrested, former Star TV CEO and media tycoon Peter Mukerjea, who is an accused in the sensational Sheena Bora murder case, was on Thursday granted bail by the Bombay High Court.

However, Mukerjea will not be able to walk free as the Bombay High Court stayed its own order by six weeks to enable CBI, the prosecuting agency, to move Supreme Court.

The bail was granted to him on a surety of Rs two lakh.

Peter would not be allowed to contact his children, when out on bail.

Justice Nitin Sambre, who granted bail to Mukerjea, observed that the evidence on record does not show prima facie proof of his direct involvement in the crime in 2012. "When the incident took place, the applicant was not in India. The applicant is in jail for the last four years and had undergone bypass surgery," he observed.

Advocate Shrikant Shivade appeared as defence counsel while CBI was represented by Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh and Sandesh Patil.

The 63-year-old Mukerjea was arrested on November 19, 2015,

His arrest had come hours after the CBI filed the charge-sheet against his ex-wife Indrani Mukerjea nee Bora, her first husband Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamvar Rai.

The trio were arrested by the Mumbai Police, however, later the Maharashtra government handed over the probe to the CBI.

Sheena Bora was daughter of Indrani with her first live in partner Siddhartha Das – and incidentally, was in a live-in relationship with Rahul Mukerjea, the son of Peter.

Sheena Bora, who was 24 at the time of her murder on April 24, 2012, was in a live-in relationship with Rahul Mukerjea, the younger son of Peter Mukerjea, her step-brother.

As a matter of fact, Indrani has passed off Sheena and Mikhail as her siblings, whens she married Peter after a relationship. Sheena's body was found in Pen taluka on May 23, 2012, as many as 29 days after her murder - but no ADR or FIR was taken and just an entry was made at the station diary of Pen police station. She was killed on 24 April, 2012.

While Indrani Mukerjea and Sanjeev Khanna are in jail, Shyamvar Rai had turned an approver.