Sheena murder case: Sanjeev Khanna seeks bail

Mumbai: Sanjeev Khanna, former husband of Indrani Mukerjea and her co-accused in the Sheena Bora murder case, on Wednesday filed a bail application in the sessions court here contending that the investigators have failed to find any possible motive to commit the crime on his part.

"It will come up for hearing on Saturday," said his lawyer Shreyansh Mithare.

The application states that Khanna has been wrongly implicated in the case.

"After reading the charge sheet, the role which is attributed to Khanna cannot be held sufficient to implicate him in the alleged murder....It isn't the prosecution case that he has strangulated Sheena," it says.

Nor does the charge sheet suggest that he benefited from the crime and none of the witnesses has explained what motive Khanna could have had, the bail plea says.

"Prosecution has miserably failed to attribute the motive for the commission of the alleged crimes," it says.

Khanna has also argued that statement of Rahul (the son of media baron and Indrani's husband Peter Mukerjea) has discrepancies and cannot be relied upon.

Khanna was identified in the identification parade before two persons including Rahul but bail application says the procedure was invalid because his photo had already been published in media and so this evidence is not admissible.

Sheena Bora, Indrani's daughter from an earlier relationship, was murdered here in April 2012 and her body was disposed of in a forest in Raigad district. Indrani, Khanna, her driver Shaymvar Rai and Peter Mukerjea have been arrested in the case.

The bail application also says that Khanna was in Mumbai on the day of the murder only to meet his daughter Vidhie.

"(Khanna) had only come to Mumbai because Indrani had called him so that he could take Vidhie to Kolkata for a few days to spend some time with his family and celebrate the his birthday."

But he could not meet Vidhie as Indrani wanted to go to Kolkata herself first and 'inspect' his family environment to decide if Vidhie would be comfortable staying with Khanna and his family, it says.

Khanna has also denied CBI's allegation that he tried to access Sheena's email account. "On seeing the emails, he duly forwarded them to Indrani without sensing any wrong-doing," the bail application says.

He was implicated solely on the basis of the fact that he had met Indrani Mukerjea during the period when the alleged murder took place, it says.