A FORMER INDIAN media executive has been arrested on suspicion of murdering her daughter for having an affair with her stepson, Mumbai police said, in a case gripping India.
Indrani Mukerjea is accused, along with two others, of strangling Sheena Bora to death in 2012 before dumping her body in a forest in western Maharashtra state and setting it alight.
“We have arrested two accused, the other is her driver Shyam Rai. After they appeared in court we got custody until 31 August”, deputy police commissioner Dhananjay Kulkarni told AFP.
Kulkarni said a third suspect, Sanjeev Khanna, reported to be a former husband of Mukerjea, had been arrested in Kolkata in West Bengal state for alleged involvement in the murder.
“We are trying to get remand from a Kolkata court to bring him to Mumbai. We’re hoping he will arrive this afternoon,” Kulkarni said.
Mukerjea, who was a co-founder and a former executive with Mumbai-based television company INX Media, is currently married to ex-Star India CEO Peter Mukerjea, believed to be her third husband.
Indian media widely reported Khanna to be Indrani Mukerjea’s second husband, while the victim was the daughter from a previous relationship.
India’s newspapers and TV news channels were abuzz with details of the scandal on Thursday, with many carrying complex family trees illustrating who’s who in the case.
Kulkarni said new information had just come to light which led police to make the arrests more than three years after the killing.
Police believe the motive for the killing had been Indrani Mukerjea’s dislike of her daughter’s apparent relationship with Rahul Mukerjea, Peter Mukerjea’s son from a previous marriage, Kulkarni said.
“It was an honour killing because Sheena was having an affair with Rahul, which was not liked by Indrani,” he told AFP. “The prima facie evidence suggests this was the reason for the murder.”
So-called honour killings are still carried out in India when families disapprove of relationships to protect what is seen as family pride.
Bora, 22, was killed in April 2012 and her burnt body was discovered the following month in woods near the town of Pen, according to Kulkarni.
“She had been strangled and petrol had been poured over the body before it was set on fire,” said the spokesman for the Mumbai force.
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