Produce Indrani Mukerjea, court tells Mumbai jail

Mumbai, June 27 (IANS) A CBI Special Court on Tuesday ordered the Byculla Jail authorities to produce inmate Indrani Mukerjea before the court on Wednesday following a complaint of assault inside the prison, her lawyer said on Tuesday.

"We moved an application before the Special Judge J.C. Jagdale citing her injuries and bruise marks on Indrani's body and head during the jail riots of June 24," lawyer Gunjan Mangla told IANS.

In her application, Mukerjea has also claimed that she had been threatened with sexual assault in jail and how she sustained injuries during the prison violence on Saturday which left a woman inmate dead.

Mangla said that in the application, she has pointed out how Mukerjea was under treatment for certain brain-related issues and wanted to know who would be held responsible if anything happened to her in jail.

The victim in the prison violence was a jail warden, Manjula Shetye - a 40-year-old prisoner serving the last few months of her 14-year jail term for murdering her sister-in-law in 1996 - who complained about some missing ration from the jail stock on Friday.

She was allegedly summoned by a woman jailor and beaten up brutally, according to witness statements recorded by the police.

Shetye was rushed to the Sir J.J. Hospital nearby but was pronounced dead on arrival that evening.

Upon learning of her death, the other prisoners resorted to violence in the jail on Saturday morning attacking jailors, policemen and policewomen and damaging the prison properties.

Transferred from Pune's Yerawada Central Jail, Shetye was due to be released in a few months. She was made a jail warden for her good conduct and made in-charge of one of the barracks in the Byculla Jail.

Additional Director-General of Prisons B.K. Upadhyay immediately ordered a probe into the incident and suspended six jail staffers against whom there were allegations of misbehavior.

Later, the Nagpada Police lodged a complaint against many of the inmates including Indrani Mukerjea for rioting, violence and damage to property.

Mukerjea is undergoing trial for the murder of her daughter Sheena Bora in April 2012, along with her husband and ex-media tycoon Peter Mukerjea and her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna.

Her former driver Shyamwar Rai, who was one of the prime accused, turned an approver and was given a pardon by the Special Court.