`Sheena Bora had told Peter Mukerjea she was Indrani`s daughter, not sister`

Mumbai: Former Star India CEO Peter Mukerjea, husband of arrested media tycoon Indrani Mukerjea, has now made a U-turn after initially claiming that he was unaware that murdered Sheena Bora was his wife's daughter and not sister.

Speaking to a news channel on Thursday, Peter disclosed that Sheena had told him she was his step-daughter and not sister-in-law. However, Peter added, he had no reason to doubt Indrani's contention that Sheena was in fact her sister.

Peter, however, did add that all this was “difficult to digest” for him.

Hours after his wife Indrani was arrested on Tuesday night for her involvement in Sheena's murder, Peter had told various news channels on Wednesday that he had been told Sheena and her brother Mikhail were Indrani’s sister and brother.

The former media tycoon had claimed that he had been kept in the dark and the fact that Sheena was Indrani's daughter came as a shock for him as well like everyone else.

“I was told before we got married that Indrani had a brother and a sister – Sheena was the sister and Mikhail was the brother. Sheena at some later point had pointed out that it was incorrect information. She had told me that 'jeeju', Indrani is giving you wrong information and you please believe me, and told that in so many words that - I am not her sister, but I am actually her daughter. She told me that,” Peter told Times Now yesterday, as per Hindustan Times.

“Of course I couldn't take that at face value, because all these years I believed that she was Indrani's sister and Indrani had told me that. I then confronted Indrani about it and she said it is utter rubbish and this has been fed to Sheena from somewhere else and it is completely, completely untrue and I was not to believe that at all,” he added.

According to Peter, this conversation took place sometime in 2011.

“I found it clearly very, very difficult to digest it...but there was no question of me not believing my wife, the woman whom I had married and lived with for over 10 years at that point. So why would I have any reason to believe...I needed to have certain very clear evidence for that to be in consideration," he said further.

Peter said even Rahul - who was in a relationship with Sheena - had told him about Sheena being Indrani's daughter.

“Rahul echoed exactly the same thing that Sheena had said. Obviously they had discussed this clearly between themselves. So when Rahul told me the same thing, I responded to him in exactly the same way,” he said.

“In my situation I believed my wife, 9 and a half times, 9.9 times out of 10, unless it is proven that she is wrong...She is my wife after all. So there is no question that when somebody comes and gives me a particular information, including my son who for all sorts of reasons may not have been happy about my second marriage," Peter added.

The Mumbai Police have arrested Indrani, her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna and her driver Shyam Rai for the murder of Sheena on April 24, 2012.