Mumbai: A special court on Tuesday allowed the CBI to summon and examine an additional prosecution witness in the Sheena Bora murder trial, which it as it its fag end with the 149th witness — CBI’s investigating officer K K Singh — deposing.The prosecution sought permission to examine Narayan Pathak, an employee of Worli’s Hotel Hill Top, after Vernon Fernandes, the hotel’s general manager, could not be examined as a witness as he had passed away. The prosecution said Fernandes had handed over documents related to accused Sanjeev Khanna’s stay at Hotel Hill Top on the relevant dates of the alleged offence and had been cited as a prosecution witness.The court allowed Pathak to depose for the limited purpose of identifying the signatures of Fernandes on hotel documents. The order said, “…though prosecution had more lapses, the documents in question are necessary for just decision of the case. Thus, the evidence for the proposed witness goes to the root of the case and it is indispensable.”The court also held that no prejudice would be caused to the defence because the accused would get an opportunity to cross-examine Pathak. At the same time, the court reminded the prosecution that the trial has been pending since 2015 and is being conducted on a day-to-day basis in view of time-bound directions.The defence opposed the application, arguing that the CBI had moved it after an unexplained delay of about three years and seven months. It also contended that other hotel witnesses and investigating officers had already been examined, and that the prosecution was attempting to fill gaps in evidence at an advanced stage of trial. The defence further argued that Pathak was not cited in the chargesheet and that Pathak’s statement had not been recorded during investigation.The court noted that Fernandes’s death had been reported earlier along with a death certificate, making his examination impossible. The CBI submitted that Pathak had worked with Fernandes and was acquainted with the latter’s handwriting and signatures. The prosecution also clarified that no fresh documentary evidence would be introduced through Pathak and that the examination would be confined to identifying and proving documents bearing Fernandes’s signatures.The court recorded that Hotel Hill Top documents were material because they directly related to the prosecution’s case that Khanna stayed at the hotel on April 24 and April 25, 2012. The court said, “Therefore, the documents in question are directly relating to the accused’s stay in the hotel. Therefore, the documents are material. Thus, these documents are necessary to unearth the truth.”The judge also observed that the investigating officer could prove seizure and chain of custody of the documents, but could not identify Fernandes’s signatures. The court said, “Moreover, the person who had worked with deceased…Vernon Fernandes may be in a better position to identify the signatures of the deceased on those documents. Thus, it can be just and proper to say that the evidence of the proposed witness is not merely helpful, but it is ‘essential’.”The court also directed that the examination of investigating officer Singh should not be postponed merely because the application was allowed and that he should be examined first on priority basis.The CBI’s case is that Indrani Mukerjea, along with her former husbands Khanna and Peter Mukerjea — who in 2015 was still married to her — and their driver Shyamvar Rai hatched a plan to abduct and murder her daughter Sheena Bora and attempt to murder her son Mekhail Bora. The CBI claimed that on April 24, 2012, Indrani, Khanna, and Rai abducted Sheena in a car, administered sedatives, strangled her, and disposed of her body in a forest in Pen in Raigad district. The alleged crime came to light in August 2015. Rai turned approver and deposed as a prosecution witness.
