Lie detector test on Peter Mukerjea within 24 hours now

A CBI court in New Delhi on Friday allowed the CBI to conduct a polygraph test on Peter Mukerjea, former media tycoon and accused in the Sheena Bora murder case. The permission was given after the CBI moved an application seeking to conduct the test. Pratim, alias Peter Mukerjea, too, showed willingness to undergo the test.

“As per rules, the test will have to be conducted within 24 hours,” a source close to the investigation told The Sunday Guardian. It is likely that a lawyer might remain present during the test.

The CBI had been mulling over conducting the polygraph test for the past few days. “We want to conduct the lie detector test. But Peter Mukerjea should be ready for that,” a senior CBI officer had told The Sunday Guardian just a day before moving an application. Sources close to the probe said Peter Mukerjea, too, never objected to the idea. “Informally, he had consented to it whenever the CBI officers talked to him about it,” a highly placed source said.

The CBI has already conducted a forensic psychological test of Peter Mukerjea. The result is still awaited. It has also sought Interpol’s help to seek details of the financial transactions of his nine companies. The CBI has said that transactions worth Rs 900 crore have taken place in them according to the internal audit conducted in 2009.

“Reliable information has been received that the company M/s 9X Media Private Limited being run by accused Pratim Mukerjea and Indrani Mukerjea carried out its internal audit in which nine companies having share holding as on 31.03.2009 were found and alleged to have instances of misallocation and siphoning of substantial amount of funds by Pratim and Indrani Mukerjea…The custody of police remand of Pratim Mukerjea is required to be extended to ascertain the modus operandi adopted by him and accused Indrani Mukerjea in the probability of suspected siphoning off the money and possibility of parking in different benami accounts in India and abroad,” the remand application submitted by the CBI to the court stated.

The ASG also told the court that Peter told the CBI that an account might have been opened in HSBC Bank, Singapore, in the name of Sheena by Indrani. He said that Indrani might have requested her friend Gayatri Ahuja who worked in DBS Bank, Singapore, to open the account.