Sheena Bora Murder Case: The Sheena Bora murder case is once again in the headlines. The bones that the CBI had claimed to be of Sheena Bora, which were seized from the jungle of Pen village in Raigad 22 years ago in 2012, are now missing. The prosecution has informed the special court of Mumbai about this. The court has been told that Sheena Bora’s bones are now missing. The bones were sent to JJ Hospital in Mumbai for examination. The CBI said that even after a lot of searching, these bones are not being found.
A book was published by Rajkamal Prakashan about the Sheena Bora murder case – Ek Thi Sheena Bora. It is written by Sanjay Singh. In this book, the revelations made so far in the highly discussed Sheena Bora murder case have been presented in a sequence so that the reader can understand the entire story behind the case of the planned murder of a young woman named Sheena Bora by her own mother. Here is an excerpt from this book which tells the story of the recovery of Sheena’s bones and their investigation –
There was one Sheena Bora
Sheena’s body was recovered on 23 May 2012, a month after her murder on 24 April 2012. At that time, the first person to see her body was 34-year-old Ganesh Dhene. Ganesh, who did the decoration work of the mandap, was also a police patil, which can also be called a ‘police friend’. Under this ‘friendship’, he had to keep an eye on the incidents happening in his village Hetavane and the surrounding areas.
On May 23, 2012, Ganesh Dhene was returning to his village from Pen. He had gone to Pen to decorate a wedding mandap. According to Ganesh Dhene, he was returning in his tempo when on the way he felt a strong need to urinate. He stopped his tempo in the forest area of Gagode Khurd. After urinating, Ganesh Dhene started picking up some mangoes that had fallen on the ground nearby. While picking up the mangoes, he went a little further inside the forest. There, suddenly he started smelling a foul smell. When he followed the smell, he saw a skeleton lying on the slope, the foul smell was coming from it. There was no flesh, only the skeleton was left. He also saw some torn parts of a bag. (Later it was found out that this was the same bag that Sheena had thrown on the burning body. This bag was not completely burnt.) Ganesh called the local police station, from where the call was made to the Pen police station.
A police inspector, an assistant police inspector and three more policemen arrived at the spot where Ganesh was waiting. As the police team arrived, he pointed to the body. The police called the local doctor. This is a routine procedure in the area. The doctor examined the remains of the body, from which some bone samples were preserved to be sent for postmortem. The skeleton was then buried near a mango tree with the help of some labourers digging the ground. The bones collected by the police were sent to JJ Hospital in Mumbai. Ganesh has no idea what happened after that. Dhene also said that he felt that the man was brutally killed as burn marks were visible.
It seems that the local Pen police did not do their job properly. Proper procedure was not followed. Despite signs of burning of the body, neither a case of murder was registered nor an FIR was lodged. Only an entry was made in the station diary. Samples were sent to Mumbai for postmortem. No attempt was made to investigate further. The negligence of the Pen police is also evident from the statement of Dr. Zeba Khan, who conducted the investigation on behalf of JJ Hospital. Dr. Khan told that the report of the samples sent by the Pen Police Station to JJ Hospital for examination (Report Wide Certificate Number 3/MLC/491 of 2013 dated 20 December, 12-2013) was completed and the hospital called the Pen Police Station and informed them about it. But no one came to collect the report. Finally, that report was collected by Inspector Kadam of Khar Police Station on 25 August, 2015.
Speculations were rife that the FIR was not registered on the orders of a senior officer. When the murder came to light in 2015, senior police officers ordered an inquiry into the said lapses. If the Pen police had done their job properly when the body was initially discovered, the case would have been solved much earlier.
According to Dr. Sanjay Thakur, in 2012 he was working in the Primary Health Centre of Raigarh district. He had gone to the spot to collect samples of the dead body for medical test. He had prepared an advance death certificate as well as a post-mortem report in the case. But that report did not say anything about the cause of death.
In his statement, Dr. Sanjay Thakur described the incident in this way- Police did not ask me the cause of death. It is correct to say that it is mandatory for the doctor to mention any abnormality or suspicious circumstances that come to light through postmortem. It is correct to say that I did not make any such entry in the postmortem.
This shows that this case was suppressed due to the inefficiency and negligence of Pen police or it was suppressed for some specific reason. This case remained secret until Mumbai police got the first clue in August 2015.
When asked about the first recovery of Sheena’s body on May 23, 2012, the Pen police referred to the Mumbai police and said that an on-spot post-mortem was also conducted.
On August 28, 2015, Sheena’s skeleton was recovered for the second time.
For this, a team of Mumbai Police reached that place in Pen tehsil of Raigad district with the help of Ganesh Dhene. The police team also included excavators and some forensic experts. They also got help from local villagers. At that time, it was not an easy task to find the location of the dead body after three years. The surrounding environment had changed a lot. Since the month of August is the monsoon month, this area looks different from that time (May, 2012 i.e. summer month) when the dead body was buried. Now it was difficult to find it. Many new plants had grown in the forest, due to which the place looked different. Ganesh Dhene remembered that the skeleton was buried near a mango tree, but there were many mango trees in that area. For the next six hours, digging was done at many places. Every time it was unsuccessful. But finally Ganesh Dhene found that place. The police recovered the remains of the body and took it for DNA and other medical tests.
The report of this test gave birth to the controversy FM579/15 vs FM578/15.
FM 579/15 vs FM578/15 controversy
On 2 September 2015, Nair Hospital sent a bone examination report to Khar Police Station stating that the bones excavated by them in 2015 (sample FM/578/2015) were of a human being. But as soon as this information came out, a controversy arose over this too. The controversy was of FM 579/15 vs FM 578/15. After the case came to light in 2015, two samples were sent to Nair Hospital for expert opinion. One sample was FM 579/15, which was sent by Pen Police to JJ Hospital in 2013. The same sample was sent to Nair Hospital in 2015. The second sample was FM 578/15. It was recovered by Khar Police in 2015 after excavating from Pen.
In the letter sent by Nair Hospital to Khar Police on 5 September 2015, many questions have been answered. Such as—
– The remains of the skeletal remains sent in FM 578/15 and FM 579/15 do not match, due to duplication of most of the human bones.
– The teeth samples of FM578/15 and FM579/15 also do not match each other.
– As far as matching of the hair of FM 579/15 with the skeletal remains of FM 578/15 is concerned, it may or may not happen.
– The bones between FM 578/15 and FM 579/15 were said to be similar or not, as apart from duplication of human bones, there were also animal bones.
Dr Sanjay Thakur, who conducted the post-mortem for the Pen police, wrote that they had preserved only the right humerus. But FM579/15 contained many burnt and unburnt bones, including animal bones.
According to a letter written by the Pen police station in 2012, the right hand bone was preserved. Its sample FM 579/15 did not reveal anything. On the contrary, the sample FM 578/15 gave a lot of strength to the investigation. Later, other forensic medical tests supported many things, such as the gender of the skeleton, age at the time of murder, height and cause of death.
The AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) medical board also considered the findings of Nair Hospital to be consistent with medical science. It also added its own additional findings, including a DNA report (M.T. No. 24026-30/15). According to this report, the biological mother of the skeleton was Indrani Mukherjee. The AIIMS medical board said that the death had occurred about three years ago. The board also concluded that it was a case of murder. The murder was committed by strangulation.
Due to all these discrepancies, the questions of the defense lawyers and the headache of the prosecution increased.
On September 7, I, along with my team, filed a report. In this report, we revealed that forensic tests have confirmed that the DNA samples of the skeletal remains recovered from the Raigad forest match those of Indrani Mukherji and Mikhail Bora.
The police had collected a lot of evidence by now but the question before them was that if only Sheena’s body had to be disposed of, then one bag was enough. Why were two bags purchased? Who was the second bag for?
Tags: Crime News, mumbai news
FIRST PUBLISHED : June 15, 2024, 19:08 IST