At a minimum, Indrani Mukerjea was an unhesitant risk-taker as composed from myriad accounts offered by people she knew well, and those not on the inside but nevertheless with a lot to say.
When she was 18 and known as Pori Bora, Indrani Mukerjea met Siddharth Das who was a college student in Shillong. They then moved in with Indrani Mukerjea's parents who reportedly ran a rickshaw-for-hire business in Guwahati. Siddharth Das says that without marrying, they had two children - Sheena and Mekhail.
For a young woman, these were - still are - bold strokes, colouring outside the lines.
Siddharth Das was careful to mask himself, first with a helmet, and then a red cap and scarf, at two recent interactions with reporters in Kolkata. He said Indrani Mukerjea told him in 1989 that she was leaving him; their children remained with her parents; he moved back to Kolkata, she relocated to Shillong. Siddharth Das told reporters "she always had ambition", electing, like huge swathes of the country, to pin that as the cause of a duly hellish descent.
Siddharth Das claimed that Sheena Bora and Mekhail were born out of his and Indrani's live-in relationship.
Both gender and the provenance of her allegedly outsized drive ("small-town" has done double duty as noun and adjective for the former media executive) seem to have influenced the jury appearing nightly on prime time to size up just what sort of woman abandons her young children. The same sort of woman, the Greek chorus of commentators have suggested, that plots to kill them when they were grown.
Raise your hand if you're feeling the burn of freshman psychology.
In the early part of 2012, the police says, Indrani Mukerjea Skyped uninhibitedly with Sanjeev Khanna, her first husband, finalizing the details of how to eliminate her older two children. Sanjeev Khanna and Indrani Mukerjea share a daughter, Vidhie, now 18. Sanjeev Khanna has reportedly told the police that his former wife revealed to him that the Bora siblings were planning to kill Vidhie. The theory, which he allegedly bought, was greased with the offer of money, a promise made good on he has reportedly confessed to the police.
Vidhie (right) is the daughter of Indrani Mukerjea's ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna who has reportedly admitted to the crime
By the mid-2000s, Indrani Mukerjea seemed to have come into substantial money. In 2002, she married Peter Mukerjea, the powerful top boss of Star India. Her head-hunting firm was successful. By common consent, the media circuit, known for its high self-regard, classified Ms Mukerjea as an arriviste, "a wannabe media tycoon" according to a commentator on an NDTV discussion.
In 2007, the Mukerjeas co-founded the INX broadcasting group with three channels and multiple
partners for 750 crores. Indrani Mukerjea, as CEO, ran the show. Two years later, the couple exited INX. There was talk of unscrupulous accounting, money being siphoned into proxy firms, the failure to launch of the couple as media moguls. The Mukerjeas appeared to find shore in Bristol. Vidhie enrolled in college there.
Indrani, who married Peter Mukerjea in 2002, allegedly introduced the Boras as her younger siblings
Sheena and Mekhail Bora, childhood friends recall, had been brought up by affectionate grandparents. Their mother re-entered their life, right around the time she married Peter Mukerjea, according to Mekhail, and offered the brazen bargain of financial help if they concealed the inconvenient truth of their biology. Siblings, it was agreed all around. Sheena Bora then moved to Mumbai, studied at trendy St Xavier's, and began dating step brother Rahul, Peter Mukerjea's son from his first marriage.
Since the arrest of Indrani Mukerjea, the Mumbai police has, in more leaks than the Titanic, expounded with cheerful enthusiasm on the intricacies of its investigation. Frequent briefings by police chief Rakesh Maria have also been atypical. Initially, police sources said they were examining Indrani Mukerjea's anger at Sheena Bora's lengthy romance with Rahul Mukerjea as a possible motive for murder. Soon, sources say, the relationship was relegated to the background to centre-stage a possible financial knot between mother and daughter.
Rahul Mukerjea and Sheena Bora had been romantically involved, to the displeasure of both Indrani and Peter.
The police has strung together this version of how Sheena Bora was killed on the basis of the alleged confessions of Sanjeev Khanna and Indrani Mukerjea's driver: the young woman was collected by the trio in a car on Mumbai's famous Linking Road; she was then drugged and strangled. With the body in the boot, the hired car was kept overnight at the home of the Mukerjeas. The next morning, according to the police, Indrani Mukerjea made the astonishing call of asking for the corpse to be placed next to her in the backseat. She then allegedly drove with her two accomplices to the forests of Raigad, where the body was set on fire.
If it seems puzzlingly contrapuntal for a murderer to display a corpse in clear view on a lengthy journey rather than transporting it in the perfectly accessible boot, the police hasn't offered an explanation. Apparently, they're not over-thinking it.
After Sheena Bora went off the grid in April 2012, Indrani Mukerjea, with relatively minimal fuss, seemed to convince family and friends that the young woman had chosen a different life in the US. Text messages sent to Rahul Mukerjea from Sheena Bora allegedly included this shorthand: "have found a new guy". The police says Indrani Mukerjea, in a risky proposition, used her daughter's cellphone for upto a year after the alleged murder.
Indrani was brought face-to-face with husband Peter Mukerjea at a police station
If the (from all accounts) hasty suspension of disbelief among her circle allowed Indrani Mukerjea considerable rope, the Mumbai police has been no less fortuitous, catching all sorts of devilishly lucky breaks. An anonymous phone call warned that Sheena Bora had been killed three years ago. Indrani Mukerjea's driver was arrested in an arms case and allegedly corroborated the murder. And last week, CSI Raigad played out on the outskirts of Mumbai as the police exhumed a skull it quickly pronounced as Sheena Bora's even before it requested DNA and forensic tests, results of which are still awaited.
In different editorials and television debates, commentators have said the police's biggest windfall has been the eagerness of the media to report on leaks and leads without distinction from facts.
Which leads us to the question - all things considered, in this case, is it really Indrani Mukerjea who has most evidenced the art of living dangerously?