Vidhie Mukerjea: Mother said she’ll prove her innocence to me

Sheena Bora murder accused Indrani Mukerjea’s daughter is out with a book about her ringside view of the shocking case

Months after former media baron Peter Mukerjea’s memoir Star Struck: Confessions of a TV Executive came out in February, 23-year-old step daughter Vidhie Mukerjea’s book, Devil’s Daughter is set to hit the shelf.

Vidhie Mukerjea, currently in Mumbai, said that she speaks to Indrani over the phone once a week. (HT File)

Published by Westland, the book offers new perspective on the Sheena Bora murder case, which came to light in 2015. Mukerjea, then 17, was living in Mumbai with her parents Indrani and Peter, co-founders of INX Media, who were arrested for allegedly conspiring to kill Bora, Indrani’s daughter from a previous marriage. Bora’s partially burnt body was recovered from a forest in Raigad district three years after the murder took place.

On August 25, 2015 Indrani was arrested for allegedly murdering 24-year-old Bora in 2012. Indrani was charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, kidnapping and destruction of evidence. Her driver Shyamvar Rai and her former husband and Mukerjea’s biological father Sanjeev Khanna were also arrested. Three months later, Peter was arrested as well. In March this year, the Bombay high court found that Peter (66) was not directly involved on the day of the crime and granted bail to him. In July, the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court rejected Indrani and Khanna’s bail applications and Indrani (49) remains lodged at the Byculla Women’s Prison. The case is before the Civil and Sessions court and over 60 witnesses have been examined so far. While Indrani has claimed that the witness statements are riddled with discrepancies, Peter has claimed that the charges against him are defective as he was in London at the time of the alleged murder.

“At some point, around 2007, Mum introduced me to this beautiful girl. She said it was her sister, Sheena. She was tall and slender, with jet-black hair and fair skin. She had these gorgeous brown eyes, and her striking features all coexisted beautifully on her face. Sheena looked incredibly similar to Mum. Within the first few times of meeting, we grew fond of each other,” Mukerjea wrote in the book.

Indrani, who married Peter in 2002, when Mukerjea was three years old, had told her family that Bora was her sister. According to the Mumbai police and later the CBI, who investigated the case, Indrani allegedly strangled Bora to death in a car after Bora refused to break off her relationship with Rahul, Peter’s son from a previous marriage. The investigators said that Bora had blackmailed Indrani, threatening to expose the fact that she was actually her daughter. Indrani reportedly used Bora’s phone to send text messages leading family members to believe that Bora had moved to the United States, the Mumbai police investigation stated. The CBI maintained that while Indrani is the prime accused, Peter did not make any effort to find Bora between 2012 and 2015.

“I always knew that I ought to record my experience. I tried once or twice but soon realised it wasn’t the right time. During the pandemic due to psychotherapy called shadow work, I managed to open up,” Mukerjea said over an email interview.

At time of her parents going to jail, Mukerjea who was to turn 18 was set to leave for London to study at Regent University. Vidhie, who had completed most of her schooling in England, graduated in International Business from Barcelona. Bora stayed with the Mukerjeas in 2007 in their apartment in Central Mumbai. She later shifted to South Mumbai as she was studying in St Xavier’s College.

Vidhie said she enjoyed Bora’s company and they often watched movies together, and went out for ice cream. “I felt we had a sisterly connection. She loved me so much and I did her,” she wrote.

According to the book, in 2010, Bora told Peter, Rahul and Mukerjea that she was not Indrani’s sister, but was in fact, her daughter. At the time, Indrani was in Goa attending a relative’s wedding – Mukerjea and Peter were to join her there shortly.

“Whilst we were outside on terrace of our apartment, Sheena told [me] she’d recently met her real dad. She repeated the story of how Indrani was actually her mother, looked at me, held my hand, and affirmed, ‘We are sisters, Vids’. This was actually the first that I had heard this story — no one had told me what had happened earlier. I remember this moment so clearly, the sense of betrayal and confusion as to why Mum would lie about this, but that was trumped by the feeling that I had a sister! We’d had this unspoken sisterly connection right from the beginning, and we loved each other so much that I couldn’t have been happier to find out that she really was my big sister.”

Her mother countered this, Mukerjea wrote.

“Indrani: she is one of the smartest women I know, and anyone who knows her will not disagree with this. She has the power to talk her way into and out of any situation. She had one of the toughest childhoods possible, and it honed her skill for self-preservation. She told us that she would take a DNA test, and also gave us ‘proof’ that Rahul and Sheena were doing drugs together. The whole narrative was turned around so it seemed like they were plotting against her to make her look bad. She even threatened to divorce Papa and leave. What does one think and do in this situation? We started to doubt ourselves. Mum got into both of our heads, and at the end of it, we felt Sheena and Rahul had made up this massive hoax.”

Barring a few press interviews, Mukerjea has been so far silent about the case and her family. She writes about her loneliness after the arrest of both her parents, and said that she underwent depression, and faced panic attacks. “I went through hell for five years. “

Peter suffered a heart attack in 2019 while he was in judicial custody. Mukerjea was in Barcelona at the time. “I was in a terrible headspace back then, and I treated everyone as though they were all against me. I kept telling myself, ‘If anything happens to Papa, I’m going to be the first one that’ll be kicked out. Everyone hates me.’ I knew that a few members in the family had warned the others, telling them I could screw my father over, just like my mum had. Like mother like daughter, they thought. But the truth is none of them knew me or my relationship with my father,” she wrote.

Mukerjea wrote about the deep bond she shared with Peter. She also touched upon her relationship with Indrani.

“They (Sanjeev and Indrani) met in Kolkata, fell in love, and got married, as one does. I was conceived during their marriage. A few years down the line, my mum and Sanjeev had a terrible falling out and decided to get a divorce. She told me she gave up everything she had, all the money and the property she owned, to get custody of me.”

Mukerjea, currently in Mumbai, said that she speaks to Indrani over the phone once a week.

“My mother and I are close in a different way. We have a complicated relationship that we are trying to work out. I am trying to understand her as she is trying to understand me. We are both trying to navigate our relationship,” Mukerjea over an email interview.

“There are many things my mum has done, things I won’t be able to forgive her for, but I have taken a path where I will give her a chance. I believe every single person deserves it,” Mukerjea wrote in her book.

“She told me how hurt and alone she’d felt: that for years she had absolutely no one, but when I reconnected with her she saw light and hope. She told me she had never given up, and would prove her innocence for me. I told her if we have to have a relationship there was a list of questions she needed to answer and she needed to be entirely truthful. I would know if she was lying to me, I told her, I have learnt a great deal in the past five years, and I believe one of the things I am better at is reading people. She promised me she would do whatever it took to mend things with me. I believe her.”