Indrani Mukerjea's lawyer says cops, Rai cooked up a false story

Mumbai: Prime accused in the 2012 Sheena Bora murder case, Indrani Mukerjea’s lawyer, on Friday claimed that accused-turned-approver Shyamvar Rai was already in police custody for nearly 10 days before being officially shown as arrested and had come up with a fabricated story in collusion with the police to implicate Indrani.

Advocates Sudeep Pasbola and Gunjan Mangala completed cross-examining Shyamvar after grilling him for around five months since August. On the last day of cross-examination, the defence asked Shyamvar who he had been working for and till when before the Khar police claimed to have arrested him. To this, Shyamvar replied that he had not been working for around 15 days prior to his arrest as he did not have a job. To a specific question, he replied that he had last worked for Samir Buddha, brother of former policeman Sohail Buddha, who stays in Khar. During cross-examination last month, defence confronted Shyamvar over his call data records (CDRs) which showed that he had spoken to Samir, 21 times over a week until April 24, 2012 i.e. the day Sheena was murdered.

On Friday, advocate Pasbola showed Shyamvar two mobile numbers and asked him to whom the numbers belonged. However, Shyamvar said he could not recollect the same. Advocate Pasbola then told him that he had repeatedly been speaking on these two numbers in August 2012 and claimed that with the help of the owners of these numbers, he had come into contact with the police and joined hands with them. Advocate Pasbola claimed that Shyamvar’s claim that he did not have a job for 15 days before his arrest was false as he was in police custody at the time and along with the police, came up with a false story against Indrani. After some back and forth, advocate Pasbola closed the cross-examination telling Shyamvar, “Indrani has no role to play in this murder and you are deposing falsely.” Shyamvar denied this suggestion.