Mumbai: Claiming a breakthrough in the sensational Sheena murder case, police said forensic tests today confirmed that the DNA samples of the skeletal remains exhumed from the Raigad forests matched those of Indrani Mukerjea and Mikhail Bora.
In a related development, a local court remanded in judicial custody for two weeks Indrani and her driver Shyam Rai while the other accused Sanjay Khanna was taken to Kolkata for being produced in a court there.
A senior police officer, requesting anonymity, said DNA samples of skeletal remains found in Raigad forest matched with those of Indrani and Mikhail, considered to be a crucial evidence in solving the murder mystery.
A fortnight after their arrest and interrogation in the case, the Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Bandra remanded Indrani and Shyam Rai to judicial custody till September 21 as the mandatory period for police custody ended today.
They were then taken to Arthur Road prison in Byculla. Khanna, former husband of Indrani, was taken to Kolkata where he will be produced in court tomorrow. The three accused have been arrested on charges of murdering Sheena and disposing of the body in a Raigad forest in April 2012.
Police had last week claimed that Indrani had confessed to murdering Sheena, her 24-year-old daughter, and were investigating if someone else could have been involved in the murder.
Sheena was allegedly strangulated in a car, and her body was burnt and dumped at a forest in Raigad, about 84 km from Mumbai.
Police had last week exhumed remains of the body from Raigad forest and claimed that digital superimposition of the profile of Sheena had matched with the skull recovered from the forest.
While seeking custody of all the three accused for another two days, the prosecution had on Saturday held that though the probe had progressed well it was yet to cover a large area and that Indrani remains “uncooperative and a hard nut to crack.”
The prosecution also held that the accused have used modern toools like email and Internet to plan the murder and impersonated the victim by creating false email. Police had also extensively interrogated Indrani's husband and media baron Peter Mukerjea for three days, though he is not an accused in the case.
Sheena's brother Mikhail and Peter's son Rahul and Vidhie, daughter of Indrani and Sanjeev Khanna, were also questioned apart from Siddharth Das, alleged biological father of Sheena and Mikhail.
